People from New Zealand call themselves Kiwis. Not because they really like the little green fruits, but because of their national icon, a small flightless bird called a kiwi. You would think that a culture so obsessed with a bird that cannot even perform its god-given duty to take to the skies would have any interest in snowboarding, but they love us down there. Hence, they get to host themselves a Burton Open.
Thanks to some incredible foresight by the Kiwi government, they placed their island country in the Southern Hemisphere, so their winter happens during our summer and we get a world-class event in the middle of August. The New Zealand Open is the kick-off event for the Global Open Snowboarding Series.
The New Zealand Burton Open is held every year at Cardrona Resort in Wanaka, New Zealand, which has elevated the resort to the world stage and put it on par with our own Stratton Mountain here in Vermont, where the original US Open wraps up the series every season.
The slopestyle course at Cardrona brought out the best talent in the world, and Mark McMorris picked up right where he left off last season with a podium-topper. Chasing him down was Seb Toots, and we’ve got a feeling that these two are going to be going at it all season.
Over in the pipe, Ryo Aono took home top honors, followed by Louie Vito and Iouri Podladtchikov, and no surprises on the women’s side with Kelly Clark and Jamie Anderson winning golds. If you’re a girl with any pride in your craft, you should check out what Snowboarder Mag’s T.Bird has to say about the state of things on your side, he says it so much better than I could, and I think you’ll find it inspiring.
Check out the TTR site for more videos from the weekend, and make sure you check out all the new Burton gear that’s dropping like Kiwis out of the nest here at The House.
[…] place during the Burton New Zealand Open of Snowboarding, the footage follows guys like Chris Grenier and Joe Sexton to a nice little mini […]