Monday Mix - June 24, 2019

According to the calendar, it's now officially summer in the north (and winter in south), and while things are certainly slowing down that doesn't mean there isn't news to be found and clips to be enjoyed in the world of shred. Let's kick things off with a little (big) announcement from today...

Milano-Cortina announced as winning bid for 2026 Olympic Winter Games

Monday evening in Laussane (SUI) saw the winning bid for the 2026 Olympic Winter Games announced, with Italy's Milano-Cortina delegation recieving the good news after edging out the bid of Sweden's Stockholm-Are.

Both bids boasted a deep and worthy pedigree of hosting top-level snowboard competition, and from our standpoint either choice would have us looking eagerly forward to the first day of competition some seven years from now. With Milano-Cortina taking the win, the prospects of having the Olympic Winter Games return to central Europe for the first time since Italy last held the event - at Torino 2006 - has us especially excited.

Shaun White (USA) winning runs Torino 2006

Sunday was Olympic Day around the world, and with an Italian bid once again winning the right to hold the Games, now seems like a good time to take a look back at the last time the biggest event in winter sports visited the bel paese, where Shaun White won the first of his three Olympic gold medals in the Torino 2006 halfpipe competition...

James, Kim, and Sadowksi-Synnott nominated for ESPYs

Scotty James (AUS), Chloe Kim (USA), and Zoi Sadowski-Synnott (NZL) all found themselves on the list of finalists for "Best (Male/Female) Action Sports Athlete" when ESPN released its nominations for the 2019 ESPYs this past week.

James is coming off a perfect season in which he took the victory at every competition he entered this season, from the first World Cup in Copper Mountain (USA), to the X Games in Aspen, to the Utah 2019 world championships, and finally the US Open.

Kim, meanwhile, is coming off a similarly spectacular season, starting things off by becoming the first women's rider to stomp a double cork 1080 in the halfpipe, before going on to claim her fifth X Games title and the first world championships gold of her career at the Utah 2019 competition.

Sadowski-Synnottt, meanwhile, matched James' triple crown performance by winning slopestyle competition at the X Games, the Utah 2019 worlds, and the US Open, while throwing in an X Games silver medal from the big air competition for good measure. After becoming the first Kiwi in 26 years to win an Olympic Winter Games medal with her bronze medal performance at PyeongChang 2018, Sadowski-Synnott took things up another notch last season.

Vote for these three HERE

Successful inspections take place at two new Canadian venues

FIS Snowboard carried out successul inspections at two new Canadian venues set to join the World Cup calendar in 2019/20, firstly at Blue Mountain, Ontario, which is getting set to host parallel slalom and parallel giant slalom competitions from February 1 to March 2, and secondly at Big White, British Coloumbia, where snowboard cross and snowboard cross mixed team competitions will hit the slopes from January 24-26, 2020.

Read more HERE

It's all happening at Les 2 Alpes

A big ol' cross section of the snowboard world has descended on France's Les 2 Alpes in the past week or so, with the terrain park opening this past weekend, the superpipe already perfectly cut and seeing tons of action, as well as alpine and cross facilities in place for the speedsters. With tons of snow up there at 3600m it's looking like the place to be heading into July...

Keeping the shred alive on the grass and sand

Who says you need snow to get in a quality carve? This video of the man known as Koyo West-side absolutely arcing it on an artificial grass dryslope prove that a perfectly railed turn is a beautiful thing to watch anywhere it's laid down...

Meanwhile, down in Peru, the Sandboard World Cup 2019 went down in early June, and the photos coming out of their feed look pretty epic...

Hiroake Kunitake (JPN) 2018/19 season edit

Young Japanese rider Hiroake Kunitake dropped his 2018/19 season edit last week, and it is chock-full of slopestyle goodness. The 17-year-old ripper laid down too many hammers to list here, but frontside to backside back-to-back triple cork 1440's at the 1:45 mark are pretty spectacular...

Julia Pereira (FRA) attends Red Cross gala

It's always fun to see riders step off the snow and into the red carpet, and PyeongChanga 2018 Olympic SBX silver medalist Julia Pereira De Sousa nailed it this past weekend in the south of France, getting fancy for a good cause at the Red Cross gala in Antibes...

Sebastien Toutant (CAN) releases new vlog

PyeongChang 2018 Olympic big air gold medalist Sebastien Toutant - aka Seb Toots - released his latest vlog this past week, with all kinds of summer camp madness going down throughout. From Seb throwing a triple tame dog on the giant dryslope big air training jump, to a trampoline surrounded by jib features, to some questionable dirtbike antics, it's definitely worth a watch.

Project Gold continues for US Ski and Snowboard

The alpine SB portion of the US squad's Project Gold camps wrapped up this weekend in Mammoth Mountain, where top US World Cup rider Robbie Burns and others put the next generation of racers through the paces at the famed California resort.

Read more on Project Gold HERE

Sam Klein (USA) full send

And finally, we end things off this Monday Mix with just about the best laid-out backie you'll likely ever to lay eyes on, as Sam Klein turned the send-o-meter up to 11 with this baby at Woodward Tahoe last week...