Though Peetu has got the TTR crown in the bag for the third time, the Tour rolls on regardless with riders battling it out in Livigno at the Burn River Jump. 10 riders made it into the main Big Air event after yesterday’s slopestyle finals, so it’s game on again tonight…

A bright sunny day welcomed the 55 international snowboarders to the 5Star Burn Slopestyle Finals yesterday in Livigno’s world-renowned Swatch Mottolino Snowpark. The course setup was stellar, with a Burn can for jibbing to begin, followed by the choice of a Burn can to bonk or a 2 meter gap box leading in to the big kicker line consisting of a 20 meter kicker, a 19 meter gap jump and a 22 meter kicker at the end.

The three-run final saw a high level of riding throughout the day, despite the weather closing in towards the late afternoon. In the end, it was the Norwegian viking Ulrik Badertscher, who took the win with a backside 1080, a double backside rodeo and a huge cab 1080. In a close second came the young Swiss talent Patrick Burgener with a switch backside 900, a backside 1080 double cork and a frontside 900. Third place went to Jamie Nicholls from the UK with his winning run that included a cab 900, frontside 720 and a backside 1080.

The top 10 riders of the 5Star Burn Slopestyle qualified automatically to ride in the 5Star TTR River Jump Big Air contest this evening to measure thir skills against the invited riders including last year’s winner Yale Cusino (USA) and the last minute invited rider Iouri Podladtchikov (SUI) at the River Jump Arena in downtown Livigno.

In the slopestyle contest, riders bagged valuable TTR World Tour Ranking points, counting towards their end of season total and potentially helping to secure an all-important top 10 spot. Ulrich Baderscher was awarded 850 points and he moved up into World No. 23 and Patric Burgener now sits in World No 16. Most notably, despite not finishing on the podium, Eric Willet improved on his Swatch TTR Ranking position significanly and now sits in World No. 9, and with a good result in tomorrow’s 5Star Big Air he could improve on his place in the TTR Top 10.

So it’s to the River Jump proper this evening, when the riders will be throwing down the heavy hammers. It’ll be going down from 20:30 to 22:30 and if you can’t make it to Livigno, you can check out the live streaming on: www.burnriverjump.it. Hopefully the quality is better than yesterday, when it looked like they were filming with cellphone cameras from 1999 and broadcasting it over the dial-up internet connection from 1999.