NZsnowboard.com

17th January 2008

The NZ Snowboard Team have been competing this week at the Burton European Open event in Laax, Switzerland.

The halfpipe semi-finals were on today and excellent news for NZ is that Ben Stewart has qualified for his first ever 6-star TTR final in 5th place!! Ben, from Whangamata, aged just 15, had a superb first run in a strong field of 42 riders including 8 out of 12, 2006 Olympic finalists. Ben landed a Huge Mctwist first hit, to frontside 7, to haakon flip to front 9 melon to back 5 mute to put him in the 5th spot ahead of Olympic Gold medallist and event favourite Shaun White who qualified in 7th.


15yr old Kiwi Ben Stewart with a Massive Mctwist

Ben has been rapidly progressing over the past 12 months, and placed 23rd in Colorado in December at a Grand Prix event, then made the semi-finals at the 6-star Davos Evolution earlier this month. The Burton European Open is the 3rd stop of the Burton Global Series, the premier international snowboarding tour. With Mitchell Brown taking out 1st place at the NZ Open back in August, and Juliane Bray clinching 3rd at the Australian Open, the NZ team are on a roll on this tour.

While some of the other riders who qualified for finals may have room to step it up, Ben landed his first 1080 in competition just 10 days ago, has a backside 900 up his sleeve, is on fine form and has the opportunity to land a personal best run in the 3-run best one counts final.

James Hamilton was unfortunate not to progress to finals snapping his board in his warm-up run before semi-finals and ending up 27th. Stef Zeestraten could not compete in semi-finals due to an injury sustained in his 2nd run of qualifying. Stef also missed out on slopestyle finals by a last-hit hand-drag yesterday placing a respectable 20th, with James in 37th and Nick Hyne in 39th. Kendall Brown placed 23rd in the women?s halfpipe event missing the harsh cut in qualifying by just two places.

For more information checkout www.ttrworldtour.com and www.opensnowboarding.com

Will be sending another update straight after finals!

Tom Willmott
Head Coach NZ Snowboard Team