With less than 24 hours to go until the sixth annual Burton New Zealand Open kicks into action at Snow Park NZ on July 29, the countdown has well and truly begun to New Zealand’s biggest international snowboarding event.

International People
Over 200 competitors from 17 countries: 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.

International Circuit
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 Swatch Ticket to Ride (TTR) World Tour.

Big Prize Money
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).

World Class Terrain
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.

Homegrown Defending Champion
In 2007 Mitch Brown became the first New Zealander to take out an Open title at the Burton New Zealand Open. He’s back to defend his title against a strong field that includes world champions, X-Games champions and Olympians.

If you can’t make it to New Zealand, 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 New Zealand Open head to www.opensnowboarding.com