Thu, 26 Feb 2009SECOND DAY OF COMPETITION AT NISSAN X-TRAIL ASIAN OPEN 2009.
Posted at 03:00:00 PMSECOND DAY OF COMPETITION AT NISSAN X-TRAIL ASIAN OPEN 2009.
World-Class Snowboard Competition Offers Crucial Points Towards
the Burton Global Open Series and Swatch TTR Championship Titles
FUKISHIMA, JAPAN (February 25, 2009) – Patches of fog and occasional rain were not enough to dampen the spirits of the 100 men who came out to battle their way through the pre-qualification and qualifier rounds in the halfpipe today. With the help of the amazing park crew at ALTS, the pipe held up to literally hundreds of runs through multiple practice sessions and two rounds of competition.
As in the slopestyle yesterday, a strong field of international riders took to the pipe to secure spots in the semi-finals later this week. The 100 riders were quickly cut down to 40, who then had a short break for some pipe maintenance before getting in some more practice for the qualifying round. The rain stopped and the visibility got better just in time for the judges to witness the best riding of the day go down.
After two runs, it was Kodai Watanabe of Japan who landed in the top spot, with a run that started off with a huge crail grab into a McTwist, a Frontside 720 Indy Grab, a Cab 720 Indy Grab and ended with a Frontside 540 Melon Grab. Plenty of Japanese, Finnish, and American riders rounded out the top qualifiers who will meet up with the invited riders in the semi finals this Friday.
If you can’t make it to Japan, 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. For more information on the Burton Global Open Series head to www.opensnowboarding.com. For more information on TTR, visit www.ttrworldtour.com.
