Cirque du Soleil: summer camp.

SATURDAY

Well, the Burton European Open went down in Laax/Switzerland, and Jamie Anderson, Roope Tonteri, Kelly Clark and Peetu Piiroinen won. TWSnow spends three minutes with Marie-France Roy. Yobeat keeps rejecting edits. Desiree Melancon had a litte accident. And Motorhead’s Lemmy tells the best story he’s ever heard (clearly, Saturday wasn’t that exciting).

SUNDAY

Here’s some mid-Atlantic magic. Ducksjen goes Tryvann. That’s all for Sunday.

MONDAY

Klaustrofobiatch is the new Duckjen movie, and it is fairly solid. Everyone goes nuts about Roope Tonteri’s Cab 1440 at the BEO. And have all the other BEO highlights, too. We post the list of confirmed riders for the Air&Style Innsbruck. Torstein Horgmo does auditions. Xavier De Le Rue goes splitboarding in Canada. The girls part from The Storming gets remixed. Girls? Here’s another Roxy Refreshments episode, and it features the girls + Heikki Sorsa. The Tahoe Dangerzone Pop episode is pretty sick. Whitelines has a 30something shred flick. No doubt, Chalet Girl will change the way we look at snowboarding. And Analog announce the European winner of their feature design comp.

The jib paradox: The more difficult your trick the longer the box feels.

TUESDAY

Joe Sexton’s epic part gets remixed, and so does the equally brilliant Cale Zima Absinthe video part. The Bataleon family edit is dope. Horgmo and Biittner cruise Keystone. Toots and McMorris talk. John Jackson wins an award. Chas Guldemond tells you how to stomp a back 10 dub. We are lazy and throw the WEARE2012 crew and the L1/Nitro team into one big jib post. The Roxy Girls become the Chalet Girl. Yobeat’s Terrible Tuesday is a really good kink klip.

WEDNESDAY

Terje Haakonsen writes an open letter to the IOC. Partysnake 3: Videogrease is this week’s most popular piece of content. A must-see! Aaron Biittner faces Andreas Wiig in this game of In Your Face. Jon Weaver writes an ode to Europe. Yobeat unearth the Winter’s Children video (Laura Hadar naked!). Greg Bretz signs Snowboarder’s Guestbook. ESPN calls MFR. This Snowboard Realms pow clip just keeps getting better. You want Enni Rukajärvi to take you home? Here you go! Here’s the I Ride Park City early January edit. Fun days at The Canyons. We give away tickets for the Air&Style Innsbruck, and the riders list for the A&S Munich gets released. Austin Smith is a gooner. The Nike 6.0 Stairset Battle shakes up Talma. And Hana Beaman lets the good times rock and roll.

Damn those beans for breakfast.

THURSDAY

Shaun White is awesome. Mervin is more awesome. Drew Amer talks about the worst snowboard injury, ever. Chas Guldemond shows you the Killington slopestyle course. Yobeat shows you Big Boulder Boarding. ESPN explains the ongoing dispute between FIS and everybody else. The Austrian Sane! crew creates their own jib park. Crewzin’ goes Videograss. The Ästhetiker stay in Chile. Romain de Marchi is featured in our desktop wallpaper of the week. Signal Snowboards create a boom-board.

FRIDAY

Gigi Rüf has a great history as one of the Pirates. Jonas Carlson’s The Storming part gets remixed. These two guys rode Rhode Island. We post the highlights from the World Rookie Fest in Livigno.

Finnish snowboard mag Slammer reintroduced us to a true shred classic, and you should know it, too!

Have a good weekend everyone!

Watch the big hitters in action ahead of Wednesday’s men’s Olympic halfpipe contest.

The TTR have put together this sick short, mashing up highlights from Shaun White and who they think is in with a chance of bursting his bubble. Double corks abound in this one, so strap in…

“After a great season for the 06/07 TTR World Snowboard Champion, Shaun White, he arrives at Vancouver as the stand out favorite for the Olympic Gold Medal. With his infamous bag of tricks including back to back Double Corks, this seasons must have, and his very own Double McTwist 12 he seems unstoppable. Watch here then as we run down through the serious halfpipe snowboarding contenders and you can make your own mind up about who’ll be biting at Shaun’s heels during the halfpipe at the Vancouver 2010 Olympic Games.”

US Olympian Louie Vito training in Breckenridge. Photo: Cole Barash.

The majority of nations have made the final selection of who’ll go to Vancouver. See who’ll be flying the flag for you.

So there we were, tapping up our contacts at the various national snowboard organisations trying to get a definitive list of all the guys and girls who’ll be repping their countries in the pipe at the upcoming Olympics and, wouldn’t you know, our homies over at the Swatch TTR World Tour beat us to the punch. Thanks guys!

It must be said, it can often seem the selection process is more confusing than an algebra exam, with each country having different required criteria, and for the riders bidding to go it must certainly be a nerve-wracking experience waiting to see if all the points tally right and planets have aligned properly. But now, for most, the wait is over.

As ever there’s some big names who didn’t make it and some relative unknowns who did so, drum roll please, here’s who’s announced their pipe ninjas so far…

MEN

USA

Shaun White
Scotty Lago
Louie Vito
Greg Bretz

FINLAND

Peetu Piiroinen
Janne Korpi
Ilkka-Eemeli Laari
Markus Malin

FRANCE

Mathieu Crepel
Arthur Longo
Aluan Ricciardi
Gary Zebrowski

SWITZERLAND

Christian Haller
Iouri Podladtchikov
Markus Keller
Sergio Berger

NORWAY

Fredrik Austbø
Tore V. Holvik
Roger S. Kleivdal
Ståle Sandbech

CANADA

Jeff Batchelor
Justin Lamoureux
Brad Martin
Micheal Lambert

AUSTRALIA

Scott James
(15 year old youngest ever snowboarder to compete at a Winter Olympic Games.)
Ben Mates

GREAT BRITAIN

Ben Kilner

NEW ZEALAND

James Hamilton
Mitch Brown

GERMANY

Christophe Schmidt

WOMEN

USA

Gretchen Bleiler
Kelly Clark
Hannah Teter
Elena Hight

SWITZERLAND

Ursina Haller
Manuela Pesko

NORWAY

Kjersti Ø. Buaas
Linn Haug
Lisa H. Wiik

CANADA

Palmer Taylor
Sarah Conrad
Mercedes Nicolls

AUSTRALIA

Torah Bright

POLAND

Paulina Ligocka

NEW ZEALAND

Juliane Bray

Kendall Brown

Rebecca Sinclair

CZECH REPUBLIC

Sarka Pancochova

GREAT BRITAIN

Lesley McKenna

FRANCE

Sophie Rodriguez
Mirabelle Thovex

As you can see, Japan have yet to announce their team and they certainly have riders who can have a say in the final outcome, but them aside all the big hitters are accounted for. Check out over on the TTR webpage where you can see how those riders have been performing on the World Tour so you can have all the information possible when you head down the bookies’ to have a wee flutter.