Burton New Zealand Open Kicks Off 2008-9 Series (28-Jul-08)

SNOW HUNTER'S SNOW NEWS, July 28, 2008 - Over 200 competitors from 17 countries

Over 200 competitors from 17 countries: have arrived in New Zealand for the Burton Open which kicks off Tuesday, July 29th at Snow Park NZ.

The Burton New Zealand Open is the first event of the 2008/09 Burton Global Open Series (BGOS) which features competitions in Australia, Japan, Europe, Canada and the USA. The event is also part of the SwatchTicket to Ride (TTR) World Tour.

Competitors include participants from Australia (11), Austria (3), Belgium (2), Canada (18), China (6), Finland (9), France (2), Great Britain (6), Germany (2), Japan (42), Norway (5), New Zealand (29), Slovakia (3), Spain (1), Switzerland (8), USA (55). The youngest competitor is 10-year-old Seamus O’Connor from Park City, USA and the eldest is 62-year-old Dick Schulze from Truckee, USA.

Competitors are competing for a share of the NZ$50,000 prize purse, plus a chance to compete for US$100,000 as overall Burton Global Open Series winner, last year won by Torah Bright (AUS) and Peetu Piiroinen (FIN).

The slopestyle course is 800m long with six sets of features including a staircase, two kickers and urban wallride.  Snow Park NZ’s Superpipe is the Southern Hemisphere’s only Olympic and X-Games standard halfpipe. It uses 70,000 cubic meters of snow and is 5.5m deep, 170m long and 18.2m wide with a 17 degree pitch.  The quarterpipe is equally massive at 10m tall and 30m wide.

If you can’t make it to New Zealand, you can watch the semi-finals and finals live on Go211.com, where webcasts and highlights of the competitions will also be available for on-demand viewing once the event is over.

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