24-25 Snowboard World Cup Tour Starting in Southern Hemisphere This Week (Hopefully)

Qualifying for the first event of the 2024/25 FIS Snowboard Park & Pipe season tomorrow was due to got started in New Zealand today, Thursday 29^th August.  However strong winds as well as rain and snow have hampered the planned start of the event.

It’s the first time since 2019, before the pandemic, that a tour has gotten underway in the southern hemisphere.

The competition was due to start on Thursday with Men’s qualifiers, then the Cardrona slopestyle World Cup is scheduled for Friday, 30 August. Women’s qualifications and men’s semifinals are set to go down on Saturday, 31 August, and finals for both the women and men slated for Sunday, 01 September.  The first Freeski Halfpipe World Cup is set to follow the weekend after. However the forecast with more heavy snowfall expected current looks challenging for event planners.

“It’s incredibly exciting to be back into the swing of major events at Cardrona, and welcoming some of the world’s best back to our little corner of the world,” said Cardrona and Treble Cone GM, Laura Hedley, adding, “We encourage everyone to come up and check out all the action… and with all these big names in town, you never know who you’ll end up sharing a chairlift with.”

Entrants include major international athletes such as Eileen Gu (CHN), Alex Ferreira (USA), Marcus Kleveland (NOR) and Dusty Henricksen (USA) as well as local talent include Zoi Sadowski-Synnott, Nico Porteous, Luke Harrold and Lucia Georgalli of New Zealand.

The Cardrona Parks crew have been busy building the Winter Games NZ courses, including Australasia’s only full-length World Cup halfpipe.  A major late winter snowstorm is expected to hit the region through the latter half of this week and its currently unclear how big an influence that may have on events.

While it’s been five years since Cardrona last saw World Cup action, the resort, along with Snowsports NZ, has kept busy in recent years hosting Australia New Zealand Cup (ANC) action, as well as the 2023 Junior World Championships in slopestyle and big air.

Meanwhile, in Australia, Olympic medalist, World Champion Snowboarder, philanthropist, and entrepreneur Scotty James was in Thredbo last week to host the first-ever “MOOKi’s Mini Pipe Cup”  – where kids ages 7-17 rode the pipe with Scotty, took part in some fun competitions, and Scotty awarded the first two “MOOKi’s Mission Grants” to support young snowsport athletes in their early careers.

Named for the titular character of his debut book “MOOKi vs The Big Scary, which launched last week, Scotty donated the mini-pipe to the Australian alpine resort to serve as a first-of-its-kind resource for the next generation of snowsport athletes to be able to train and compete in Australia. This is all in part of a partnership with Thredbo to build Australia’s first 22ft halfpipe for Olympic training, which gives Australian athletes like Scotty the ability to train for competitions like the 2026 Olympics in their home country.

Scotty is also a business advisor for the X Games and the newly announced X Games League, and his passion lies in working to strategically push the sport forward, inspire the next generation of snowboarders, and leave a lasting legacy, all while still actively competing at the top of his game.

After Cardrona, the slopestyle season takes a break of nearly four and a half months while we wait for the snow to build up north. When we do return to slopestyle action it’ll be for a big one, as from 15-18 January the Laax Open will once again serve as perhaps the “don’t-miss” event of the worldwide competition calendar.

The Laax Open slopestyle and halfpipe World Cup week serves as a mecca for the snowboard world of Europe and beyond, and with this season sees the 10th anniversary of the world-renowned competition.

Following Laax the tour heads to the USA for the biggest non-World Championships competition week of the year, as Buttermilk Resort in Aspen is stepping up to host slope, big air and halfpipe competitions over the course of a heavy seven days from 30 January to 06 February.

From Aspen the tour moves north to Calgary, Canada, where slope and pipe are set to hit the Great White North’s premier training ground at Canada Olympic Park for the Snow Rodeo from 19-23 February. Site of the very first FIS Snowboard World Cup slopestyle competition back in 2010 (won by Canada’s own Mark McMorris, of course), look for Calgary to celebrate 15 years since that history-making hosting turn with a special one this season.

Finally, if all goes according to plan, it’s yet another highly-anticipated event to cap off the slopestyle World Cup season, as sights are set on Livigno, Italy, for what will be the test event competition for the Milano-Cortina 2026 Olympic Winter Games halfpipe event next winter.

While there’s still some work to be done on the venue there in Livingo - thus the “TBD” aka “to-be-determined” marker beside the event on the calendar.

“We’re more than hopeful that all the pieces will be in place come 12-14 March that we’ll be able to set the best in the world loose on the slope course that will serve as the venue for the biggest show on earth in February 2026,” said a FIS spokesperson.