The Billabong Ante Up 2010. Rider: Seb Toots, photo: Scott Serfas

Riders from around the globe are making the journey to Whistler, Canada for the second annual Billabong Ante Up big air competition set for this Friday, July 1st, 2011. The Ante Up will be the first 5Star stop on the 2011/12 TTR World Tour and will also act as the first event where riders can register results for the all-new TTR Big Air Ranking list. The riders list is full of international talent including Eric Willett (USA), Mark McMorris (CAN), Sebastien Toutant (CAN), Sage Kotsenburg (USA) and Seppe Smits (BEL) who were all major forces at big air events last season. These guys will need to be on top of their game with some other big names on the invite list who will all be battling for the 850 TTR Big Air ranking points and a piece of the $50,000 USD prize purse.

Riders will face tough competition with an invite list full of talent

This year’s Ante Up competition is setup to be a progression clinic with veterans like Chas Guldemond (USA) and Scotty Lago (USA) in the mix with younger contest killers like Tyler Flanagan (USA), Gjermund Braaten (NOR), Charles Reid (CAN), Matts Kulisek (CAN) and Roope Tonteri (FIN). With double-corks becoming stock tricks at big air competitions, there’s no telling what riders might attempt on the 80-foot gap step-down jump that the Whistler park crew has been shaping into perfection over the past two weeks. The event is open to the public and will mark the celebration of Canada Day with special guest, K-OS, a Canadian hip hop star who will be playing DJ sets throughout the day. For those unable to attend, all the action from the top of Whistler mountain can be viewed live via webcast at www.billabong.com/anteup on July 1st, 2011 from 1p.m. to 5p.m. PST.

Rider: Matts Kulisek, photo: Scott Serfas

First event for riders to register results for new TTR ranking system

The TTR World Tour now features a new ranking system that has separate ranking lists for Big Air, Slopestyle, Halfpipe and Overall. With this new ranking system in place, TTR will now award World Tour titles for each of the four separate ranking categories. The Ante Up will be the first event of the 2011/12 season where riders will be able to register results on the Big Air World Tour Ranking list and the Overall World Tour Ranking list. Check out www.ttrworldtour.com for a complete breakdown of how the new TTR World Tour Ranking system works.

Southern Hemisphere schedule confirmed

After the air settles from all the action at Ante Up, the TTR World Tour will take a short break before heading down to the Southern Hemisphere for events in Australia and New Zealand. The Southern Hemisphere calendar is packed with great events including the 5Star Burton New Zealand Open (ss, hp) and the 4Star Stylewars (ss) event going down in Australia. The complete Southern Hemisphere calendar is available at www.ttrworldtour.com.

R: Mark McMorris. P: Scott Serfas

The TTR World Tour is getting ready to kick off its 10th season of snowboarding with the 5Star Billabong Ante Up in Whistler, Canada before heading down to New Zealand and Australia for the Southern Hemisphere leg of the tour. The Southern Hemisphere calendar is full of highlights including the 3Star Dew Hut Jam in July, and the 4Star Billabong Bro Down, 5Star Burton New Zealand Open and 4Star Stylewars all happening in August. There is a ton of action lined up for the 2011/12 season including an all-new ranking system, the 6Star World Snowboarding Championships in February and all the other elite events the TTR World Tour is known for.

New Ranking System and World Titles in 2012
The TTR World Ranking system has been totally overhauled and will now be split into four separate world ranking lists: TTR Slopestyle World Tour Ranking, TTR Halfpipe World Tour Ranking, TTR Overall World Tour Ranking and TTR Big Air World Tour Ranking. The 5Star Billabong Ante Up and the 5Star Burton New Zealand Open will be the first two major events where riders will be able to earn points that will count towards these new ranking lists. Check out www.ttrworldtour.com for a complete breakdown on how the new ranking system works.

Summer Calendar Packed Full of Sick Events
The Billabong Ante Up will kick off the 2011/12 TTR World Tour season on July 1, 2011 in Whistler and will register the first results that will count for the TTR Big Air World Tour Rankings. With big air competition specialists such as Mark McMorris, Sebastien Toutant and Seppe Smits all slated to attend, Whistler will be playing host to some intense action on the massive jump. The cornerstone event of the Southern Hemisphere season, the Burton New Zealand Open, is back as a 5Star competition and will be the first major event where men and women can bank ranking points for the Halfpipe and Slopestyle ranking lists. The NZ Open will be going down at Cardrona Alpine Resort from August 9th to 13th, 2011. Check out the list of great Southern Hemisphere events below and check out ttrworldtour.com for the complete calendar:

5Star Billabong Ante Up – Whistler, B.C., Canada July 1, 2011
4Star Billabong Bro Down – Wanaka, New Zealand, August 5-6, 2011
5Star Burton New Zealand Open – Wanaka, New Zealand, August 9-13, 2011
3Star New Zealand Winter Games – Wanaka, New Zealand, August 19-24, 2011
4Star Stylewars – Falls Creek, Australia, August 21-24, 2011
3Star Dew Hut Jam Mt. Buller, Australia, July 30-31, 2011

R: Iouri Podladtchikov. P: Pablo Azocar

The Road to the 2012 World Snowboarding Championships
The inaugural 6Star World Snowboarding Championships (WSC) will take place February 10-19, 2012 in Oslo, Norway and will feature halfpipe and slopestyle competitions. Riders still have the opportunity to qualify for one of the 240 spots available and can do so through the TTR World Rankings. The TTR Top 50 men and Top 30 women on the Halfpipe World Ranking List or the Slopestyle World Ranking List as of January 16th, 2012, will automatically be eligible to compete at the WSC. Riders who are currently outside the TTR Top 50 men or Top 30 women still have the opportunity to improve their ranking position and can begin earning some major points at the Burton Zealand Open in August and by continuing to compete at TTR events up until the January 16th qualification cut-off date. For more complete information on the WSC, please visit: www.wsc2012.com .

VIDEO:
2011/12 TTR Season Begins At Billabong Ante Up (5Star)

http://www.ttrworldtour.com/nc/multimedia/video/play/ttr-battery-catfight-2011-wrap-up.html

For the two of you who did not follow all the action from Saturday’s Billabong Ante Up contest on our live webcast here are the results and a choice video, showing an astounding accumulation of Double Cork 1260s in a true park binge. Seb Toots took home the deserved victory. If you were planning on entering the circuit of professional snowboarding anytime soon you’d better step up your slopestyle skills – because the riding level has gone through the roof. The video is a must-see!

Alright then, here’s the offical pribble-prabble:

Boy do they look happy. Photo: Matt Forsythe

The Billabong Ante Up competition, the first 5Star event of the 2010/11 Swatch TTR World Tour season, went off this weekend with an excellent showing from a diverse field of riders.  The summertime event was held in the Camp of Champions park on the Blackcomb glacier and featured a massive 75-foot gap jump. The Ante Up hosted 40 riders in a big air format who were all going for a piece of the $50,000 prize purse and 850 TTR ranking points.  It ended up as an all-Canadian podium and Sebastien Toutant (CAN) took the top spot making him $20,000 richer. Toutant also secured the World No. 3 spot in the TTR World Rankings and received an automatic invite to the 6Star Billabong Air & Style Innsbruck later in the season.

Among a lot of other interesting things you can also see Seb Toots. Photo: Matt Forsythe.

Canadians defend their home turf with 1260 double corks

Every rider was pulling off impressive tricks all day and it came down to a double cork 1260 podium with the top three riders doing different variations of the trick. Toutant won the first place with a flawless Cab 1260 double cork and had this to say about his win, “Winning the first 5Star TTR big air contest was just amazing, it was an epic final and it’s sick because I’ll be in the top of the TTR rankings going down to New Zealand in August.”

Coming in second place behind Toutant and winning $10,000 USD was Matts Kulisek (CAN) who landed a frontside 1260 double cork and Mark McMorris (CAN) took third place earning $6,000 USD for his backside 1260 double cork.  Other notable mentions include Gjermund Braaten (NOR) who also stomped a backside 1260 double cork to take fourth place which, when combined with his 2009/10 season-end bonus points, bumped him up into TTR World No. 1.

More information on all things TTR here.

The world of snowboarding is a confusing one.

Once again we were actually working an entire morning to compile another installment of This Week in Snowboarding. Not surprisingly, we found some interesting stuff that is also great to kill some time. Here are the highlights from this week’s snowboarding, drawn from our own site and other places that are actually good.

SATURDAY

The Videograss crew does Sweden. Someone invented a dearly-needed heated toilet seat. Johan Gaume, Olivier Gittler and Arthur Longo shred Les2Alpes. A lot of kids bail at Windells. And I suppose the world was waiting for a documentary on Grilo‘s life.

SUNDAY

If welding gets you excited you should check out the Skullcandy Rail Battle Reminder over at theMustachio.com. The Angry Snowboarder brings you the full DC Mountain Lab.

Even while water sliding he knew how to handle a laser gun.

MONDAY

We kicked off our Onboard Pirates Week. We posted the first snowboard session edit from Windells. The remarkable Diaries Down Under visit The Remarkables. Scotland got its summer shred dialled. Mt. Hood’s Charlie passed away. No snowboarding, but still worth a mention: First ever (sligthly dodgy) kickflip in surfing.

TUESDAY

the anticipation of the Billabong Ante Up event begins (and it includes a video). The new Bluebird movie looks sick. Chinese snowboarding looks good, too. Shaun McKay doesn’t land this trick. Who? Him. Yobeat posts a nice Snowbird season ender.

Nick Visconti has his snowboarding on log.

WEDNESDAY

ESPN has a very moving video of Kevin Pearce’s homecoming. And a list of cool snowboard dads. We have the excellent Respect Your Elders teaser and the Lost Bear Edit. We have to add a link to this video, as it is from a crew called “Garbage Gang“, and it includes some porn. The Euro X Games dates get announced. Someone invents a gas-powered snowboard. And the Helgasons know how to make good use of kickers, jibs, and diarrhea.

THURSDAY

Riding sleds is gnar. Thomas Feurstein loves pole jams. Canadians are good riders, as documented in the “Share the Wealth” teaser. So are the Brits, as shown in the Standing Sideways highlights. The Lazy Boy’z (note the grocers’ apostrophe) release a teaser. And even in Sweden, summertime is ON.

FRIDAY

Our website finally posts the interesting Tailgate Alaska teaser. The Smith agents spend a team week full of shred in Val Senales. YES get the EuroSIMA breakthrough brand award. We will get to see some industry party shots every Friday. And Comune release their groundbreaking teaser number 4.

Don’t forget to follow all the action of the Billabong Ante Up this Saturday!

Enough said, now back to the world cup. Somehow it all sounds familiar: The French surrendered early, the USA arrive last minute and the English are left to fight the Germans… Happy weekend everyone!

Where: Whistler, Canada

Do you remember this week’s post on the Billabong Ante Up live webcast? Well, you can still head over to billabongpro.com to see all of the action go down. However, yours truly Onboard will feature the live webcast, too! The plan is to stream the action on Saturday, 26 June, from 8pm to midnight (CET). This is a great way to escape the general football craze that has its tight grip over Europe.

Scotty Lago, clearly looking forward to the event.

For some more information on the event read on, I pasted some of the shit from the old post into this one. Makes it look like I actually worked hard, you know?

With all the crazy progression that’s been going down lately (looking at you, Torstein Horgmo) we’re pumped about the first 5-Star TTR event of the season that’ll be shaking foundations in the Camp of Champions terrain park at Whistler Blackcomb from June 26-30 – The Billabong Ante Up.

The rider list reads like a Who’s Who of shit hot steezers, with Scotty Lago, Triple Torstein, Seb Toutant and many more signed up and ready to shralp. Billabong’s live webcast team will be bringing action from the qualifying to the finals, unique rider interviews and the awards ceremony through the pipes and direct to your machine.

Riders will be hitting up a jump-to-rail feature that’s being constructed as we speak by Arena Snowparks Steve Petrie. He explaing: “The jump is going to be an 85-95 foot step-over style jump with a slightly elevated take-off. We’re going to gap out the area behind the take-off so it should be great for all the riders. The Push.ca rail set-up includes a 50-foot staircase with Down-Flat-Down Combi Box on one side and a DFD rail on the other.”

The Billabong Ante Up schedule is as follows…

June 25 – Rider Practice

June 26 – Live Event Coverage (weather dependent)

June 27-30 – Bad weather contingency days

For more info, head to billabong.com/anteup!

We already posted all relevant information on the Billabong Ante Up, the first 5-star TTR comp of the season, including a link to the live webcast, which – who knows? – we might hijack before too long and embed it on our website. What we did not post, though, was some crazy edit of the riders that will take part in the shebizzle. I guess we can call it a wrap, now.

Watch the action from Camp of Champions, live.

With all the crazy progression that’s been going down lately (looking at you, Torstein Horgmo) we’re pumped about the first 5-Star TTR event of the season that’ll be shaking foundations in the Camp of Champions terrain park at Whistler Blackcomb from June 26-30 – The Billabong Ante Up. And now we’re even more stoked that we’ll be able to watch all the sickness, live, from the comfort of our laptops by heading to BillabongPro.com and clicking on Ante Up.

The rider list reads like a Who’s Who of shit hot steezers, with Scotty Lago, Triple Torstein, Seb Toutant and many more signed up and ready to shralp. Billabong’s live webcast team will be bringing action from the qualifying to the finals, unique rider interviews and the awards ceremony through the pipes and direct to your machine.

Riders will be hitting up a jump-to-rail feature that’s being constructed as we speak by Arena Snowparks Steve Petrie. He explaing: “The jump is going to be an 85-95 foot step-over style jump with a slightly elevated take-off. We’re going to gap out the area behind the take-off so it should be great for all the riders. The Push.ca rail set-up includes a 50-foot staircase with Down-Flat-Down Combi Box on one side and a DFD rail on the other.”

The Billabong Ante Up schedule is as follows…

June 25 – Rider Practice

June 26 – Live Event Coverage (weather dependent)

June 27-30 – Bad weather contingency days

For more, head to billabong.com/anteup