TTR World Championships Recap

The TTR World Championships went down in Norway last weekend.

The World Snowboarding Championships (WSC) is the first championships run by snowboarders since 1999. It is developed and owned by the Ticket To Ride (TTR) and World Snowboard Federation (WSF). It is organized by Snowboard-VM 2012 AS – the local organizing company owned by The Arctic Challenge, The Norwegian Snowboard Federation and Oslo Vinterpark. (TTRWorldTour.com)

This is the first time snowboarders have put on a world championship even since 1999. The TTR World Championship is the way the sport of snowboarding is flipping the bird to the Olympics. A lot of snowboarders will tell you that the judging in the Olympics doesn’t reward risk, individuality, or progression. These are three foundations that snowboarding is built on (a fourth one is fun). At the upcoming Olympics, snowboard slopestyle is joining the events. This is just another way for members of the industry to hate Olympic judging. Remember the first year snowboarding was in the Olympics and Terje Haakonson, the top snowboarder at the time, decided to boycott the event? People still talk about that moment as being one of the greatest in the sport. On the other hand, we applaud Vermonter Ross Powers for winning the very first halfpipe event in the Games. To me it feels like the new and old guard, or the new and old school.

Even though I haven’t been around since the inception of the sport, I feel like I have a pretty good understanding of what has been happening in the past 10 years. These past 10 years have been some of the most important years. This is the time when snowboarding went mainstream and mulitiple snowboard companies started to make money. Shaun White became a household name. One of the original Nintendo 64 games was 1080, a freestyle snowboarding game. The X Games started to make primetime. We got energy drinks like Red Bull and Rockstar – 2 huge snowsports sponsors. I think we’re going in the right direction. The only thing we could do better is make snowboarding more accessible to people of all socio-economic backgrounds. There are plenty of programs out there trying to make that happen -Burton’s Chill Foundation, Stoked Mentoring, and Oakley Progression Sessions to name a few. Keep it up!

And now, in 2012, we’re hearing that more people are switching back to skiing. Right now we’re in a critical moment. I don’t know about you, but I would much rather share the hill with side-sliders than jousters with double planks. There is fundamentally something that makes snowboarders more relaxed on the hill where skiers get more self righteous. I’m generalizing here, but to be honest I’ve seen this trend, and to be honest, I’ve participated in it. I feel different on skis than on a board. But I diverge.

Back to the event in Norway. There were qualifiers and semi finals during the week with finals on Saturday and Sunday. It was kind of cool that a lot of the top athletes went straight from the Dew Tour in Ogden, Utah to Oslo, Norway. I was in Utah at that event and after every final, the riders were like “Okay, now let’s go to Norway.” Spencer O’Brien said that when she “packed” her bag, her clothes were still wet. Below is a highlight video and the podium results.

Men’s Slopestyle

1. Chas Guldemond (USA)
2. Sebastien Toutant (“Seb Toots”) (CAN)
3. Seppe Smits (BEL)

Men’s Halfpipe

1. Iouri Podladtchikov (“iPod”) (SUI)
2. Matt Ladley (USA)
3. Louie Vito (USA)

Men’s Quarterpipe

1. Terje Haakonsen (NOR)
2. (not sure about other results because they’re not officially posted. will update)

Women’s Slopestyle

1. Spencer O’Brien (CAN)
2. Jamie Anderson (USA)
3. Enni Rukajarvi (FIN)

Women’s Superpipe

1. Kelly Clark (USA)
2. Queralt Castellet (ESP)
3. Gretchen Bleiler (USA)