Industry News
The Style Experience, Canada’s first-ever Snowboard FIS World Cup Stadium Big Air event is heading to Edmonton’s Commonwealth Stadium this weekend. Part of Canada’s Shred the North Series, it will be the first North American stop on the 2022/2023 FIS World Tour. A crucial, competition, training, and qualification for the Olympics, the event will attract some of the biggest names in freestyle snowboarding. The Style Experience kicks off on Friday, December 9th, and host the finals on Saturday, December 10th.
Edmonton’s Commonwealth Stadium, Canada’s largest outdoor venue, is home to the Edmont Elks Football club and has been transformed from an arena that previously hosted sporting events into a snowboard World Cup stop. The stadium has a capacity of 60,081 people and is expecting a crowd of 10,000 spectators, which will be home to North America’s first snowboard jump built into a grandstand.
There has never been a jump like this in Canada before, where the world’s best snowboarders will take the stage under the lights to hit the massive kicker. It’s the largest in-city scaffolding jump ever built for a Snowboard Big Air competition, with an 82-foot jump and a drop-in that measures 15 stories high.
The construction of the jump, made possible in part by Clark Builders, hasn’t been easy. Construction has been underway since Nov. 7 and it took 8,000 feet of two-by-fours to build the 483-foot-long snowboard jump on the southeast side of the bowl. It is supported by a massive scaffolding support structure. Snow has been transported from Rabbit Hill into Commonwealth Stadium since last Tuesday to ensure the jump is packed in time for the event.
Riders are stoked as the jump was designed for snowboarders by snowboarders and architected by one of the best in the biz, Charles Beckinsale, master park builder, and Director of The Stomping Grounds Park in Saas-Fee, Switzerland. As snowboarding’s biggest names take on each other in head-to-head battles, creativity and style will be rewarded over fast rotations. Regarding the event, Richard Hegarty with Snowboard Canada told Global News CA:
“You’re likely to see some quad tricks out of some of the men, which is as far as it’s gone in big air competitions before and we’re really hoping that we’ll see a triple out of the girls. There’s quite a lot of knuckle in the jump. There’s quite a lot of height on top of it. The riders will actually clear most of that, so they’ll be landing third of the way down this landing and then they’ll be able to slow down before they hit the wall.”
