The halfpipe World Cup season kicked off at Copper Mountain (USA) in the middle of December and the next stop took place 10 days later at Secret Garden (CHN). This season there are 5 contests on the schedule which means the world’s best halfpipe riders travel to USA, China, Switzerland and Canada over the course of the 3 months. Although there are no world championships or Olympic Winter Games in front of us anytime soon, the riders still have a lot of important contests to focus on.
Copper Mountain (USA), Dec 12-14, 2019 – check out the report here.
Secret Garden (CHN), Dec 20-22, 2019 – check out the report here.
Laax (SUI), Jan 14-18, 2020 – The first halfpipe competition of the new decade will go down in what is perhaps the snowboard world’s best-known and most well-loved resort – Laax, Switzerland. 2019/20 marks the fifth season of the Laax Open in its current form and the fourth straight year that the Open has also been a World Cup event (though the resort has been a host of memorable top-level snowboard competition dating all the way back to 1993). With massive crowds lining Laax’s always-perfect pipe to watch the world’s most explosive snowboarders sending it under the lights in the nighttime finals, the atmosphere at the Laax Open will be short of electric. Mark this one on the calendar!
Mammoth Mountain (USA), Jan 29-31, 2020 – After Laax it’s back Stateside to a venue no less legendary in snowboarding’s history, as we return to California for the Land Rover US Grand Prix Mammoth Mountain for the fourth time in the past five seasons. Mammoth’s Unbound terrain park and halfpipe have seen essentially any rider who’s anybody put in their laps over the past several decades of snowboarding, and pure vibe around the resort is a joy to take in every season. Pulling into that parking lot and seeing the massive woolly mammoth sculpture that greets the resort’s visitors inspires a little bit of awe in everybody who makes the trip, and on days when the sun is shining there’s no better place to be for a day of World Cup halfpipe competition.
Calgary (CAN), Feb 13-15, 2020 – The 2019/20 FIS Snowboard Halfpipe World Cup season will come to a conclusion in mid-February in the Great White North, at Calgary’s Canada Olympic Park. One of the host venues for the Calgary 1988 Winter Olympic Games, Canada Olympic Park has since then become one of Canada’s most important high performance sport training centres. And, located as it is just 20 minutes from downtown Calgary, a city of some 1.3 million people, COP is also one of the most conveniently located venues as you’re likely to find anywhere in the world. With Canada’s best halfpipe and the excitement of the halfpipe World Cup finals going down in one of the world’s best snowboard nations, the Snow Rodeo in Calgary is sure to be a fitting ender to the season.
Livestream:
Perhaps the biggest news for the World Cup action this season was the announcement that all World Cup events – save for those with special broadcast rights restrictions such as the ones seen in Switzerland and Austria – will be live streamed on the FIS Snowboard YouTube channel this season.
Source: FIS
Photo: Buchholz/FIS Snowboard
