Nike Open Winter Dew Tour Breckenridge, Colorado, Dec 15th - 18th 2011
For the forth year in a row the Nike Open Winter Dew Tour invited the world’s best snowboarders and freeskiers to Breckenridge’s award-winning Freeway Terrain Park to participate in superpipe and slopestyle events.
Three major multi-sports events of the Winter Dew Tour in Breckenridge (Colorado), Killington (Vermont) and Snowbasin (Utah) allow riders to accumulate points to potentially win the $1.5 million competition purse and the prestigious overall Dew Cup.
One of the most touching highlights at the Nike Open Dew Tour event in Breckenridge was the return of Kevin Pearce back on the board. While friends, fans and co-snowboarders had been riding for Kevin – who had suffered a severe traumatic brain injury two years ago, underwent extensive rehab and eye surgery (that’s quite a long aside) – they now were finally able to ride with Kevin again.
The best freeskiing tricks were performed by Kevin Rolland with a double cork 1260 in the super pipe, and by Chris Logan with a biospin 1080 tail grab during the slopestyle comp. Not surprisingly Kevin Rolland also won the freeski superpipe finals, and Tom Wallisch brought the freeski slopestyle finals home.
The ladies were also good for amazing tricks: Maddy Shaffrick pulled a Haakon flip in the superpipe, well high over the coping, and Spencer O’Brien stuck a perfect frontside 720 in the slope style contest.
The snowboard slopestyle event saw a riding standard that went through the roof:
No less than four doubles were shown in the men’s runs, and it was clear that the guys would have to perform their tricks cleanly if they were to have any chance of a podium finish.
The best snowboard tricks were performed by Iouri Podlachikov with a double McTwist in the super pipe and by Mikkel Bang with a switch backside 1260 in the snowboard slopestyle course.
First place went to Oakley rider Gjermund Braaten, followed by his Oakley teammates Sebastien Toutant on second and Charles Reid third.
“It was unbelievable,” Braaten said. “I’d been doing that run a lot in practice so I was feeling good when I came into the contest. Just being able to put down a run that I was satisfied with was more than I could ask for.” Braaten’s humble comment referred to a switch back tail 270, cab boardslide front to fakie, switch back double cork 10, cab double cork 9, front 180 switch wallride, switch backside 180 off, back double cork 10 and a front double cork ten.
Yet one of the biggest surprises came from “Mr. Ginger Sensation” himself:
On just four days training due to sickness Shaun White opened his incredible superpipe run with a massive air easily 20 feet over the coping without even breaking a sweat, scoring an unbeatable 95.00 points with a series of flawless tricks and landing on the first place.
Once more a testament to how good Shaun White really is – even riding in skin-tight pants and a sort of leather jacket!
All eyes are now on the next event of the Dew Series, the Pantech Invitational in Killington, Vermont, on Jan 19th – 22nd 2012.
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