Snowboarders warm up for Audi quattro Winter Games NZ

Blue skies and a freshly cut superpipe provided a perfect day for snowboarders competing in the Australia New Zealand Cup (ANC) at Cardrona Alpine Resort, near Wanaka today.

The FIS sanctioned event served as a good warm up for the Audi quattro Winter Games NZ which get underway in 10 days’ time kicking off the 2017-18 World Cup season.

Competitors each had two qualifying runs to impress the judges with the top six female and top 10 male riders earning spots in the afternoon’s finals.

Australian Emily Arthur was the standout qualifier in the women’s snowboard field and also earned the win in the finals beating NZ’s Dakota Craig.

The second in qualifying had delivered one of her best-ever competition runs, and the judges rewarded her for spinning all directions and demonstrating a good variety of tricks.

USA's Kayleigh Carew took third.

“It’s been a fun competition, my goal was to land both runs so I’m pretty happy to have done that, and put down two good runs,” said Arthur.

Men’s snowboard qualifying saw a close battle with less than a point separating Japanese riders Naito Ando and Ikumi Imai, both riders landing technical tricks and achieving impressive amplitude.

And Japanese competitors also dominated the men’s snowboard podium.

No stranger to the Cardrona halfpipe and winner of the 2016 Cardrona Games, Naito Ando held off the charge from Ryo Aono (2nd) and Ikko Anai (3rd) nailing a couple of 900s and 1080s landed with effortless style.

Full snowboard results can be viewed here: https://www.fis-ski.com/DB/snowboard/results.html

Competition continues tomorrow (Wednesday) when athletes will take to Cardrona Alpine Resort’s world-class slopestyle course for qualifying rounds ahead of slopestyle finals on Thursday.