O’Neill Pro Freestyle Rocks Avoriaz This January

The O’Neill Pro Freestyle is once again set to take over the resort of Avoriaz in the heart of the French Alps for the 3rd edition of the Ticket To Ride (TTR) Snowboarding World Tour event. The O’Neill Pro Freestyle forms part of the new World Tour system and has been granted a 4-star rating for men, while the women’s event constitutes an integral stop on their revised world tour. To mark the dawn of a new era in professional snowboarding, the O’Neill Pro Freestyle’s event format has been tweaked to ensure it delivers maximum impact. The first major change has been to retire the halfpipe discipline and replace it with a monster quarter pipe contest. And it’s not going to be just any quarter pipe, it will be a quarter pipe of kings shaped by the very masters responsible for the Arctic Challenge’s sublime dimensions, David Ny and Klaus Hagstrom. The legendary slopestyle aspect to the O’Neill Pro Freestyle continues its residency at the event. Nico Marduel, David Ny and Klaus Hagstrom, in consultation with O’Neill team riders Gian Simmen, Stefan Gimpl and Eirik Haugo, have been charged with the responsibility of shaping its sublime contours and transitions. The brief: to ensure another classic freestyle battle ensues in the Portes du Soleil. Aside from the main event specialty contests including the popular city, evening rail contests will give the invited riders an opportunity to line their pockets with wads of free money. 48 riders in total will compete in each of the finals. 24 riders will be invited and gain access through to the main event, while an open qualification round, with unlimited places, will decide another 24 riders for the finals. Finalists will be competing for a share of the 30.000$US prize fund as well as the lucrative TTR World Tour Points on offer. The judging of both disciplines will be similar to a surf contest format. The riders will have to blow the minds of panel of judges working from an innovative and progressive scoring criterion. The riders will have a maximum of 10 runs with only the two best runs scored and counting towards their final standings. The Judging will be permanent throughout the heats and the scores will be broadcast after each individual run. Throughout the heat, the riders will be constantly reminded of their positions and forced to push their personal performance parameters to avoid early relegation. It’s shaping up to be another week of BIG hits in les Portes du Soleil. How does the new Ticket To Ride (TTR) World Snowboard Tour Ranking System work? The key objectives of the new TTR World Snowboard Tour are to establish a credible world ranking system and a subsequent world number 1. 23 men’s event and 8 women’s event make up the 2006 world tour. Each event is ranked from 3 to 6 stars according to the events status with 6 star events offering maximum world tour points. A snowboarders ranking will be decided based on their top 5 combined results over the season in the disciplines of halfpipe, slopestyle, big air and quarterpipe.