Open Season: Ten Years of the Nanshan Open

the Beijinger talked to Steve Zdarsky, China’s “Godfather of Snowboarding,” about how Beijing’s own Nanshan Open grew to be one of Asia’s biggest events on the Ticket to Ride (TTR) tour.

2003
Winning trick: Backside 360. Steve Zdarsky (Austria)
Prizes: Bragging rights
Park setup: “One mini kicker, one rail, a crappy halfpipe”
Riders: “We called some of our friends to come over at the end of the season and basically just had a jam session.”
That was the year that … “We called it The Nanshan Open as a joke.”

2004
Winning trick: “360 and like whatever on the rail.” Wang Lei (China)
Prizes: “Burton sent some gear from Japan.”
Park setup: “We added a rail that year. So then we had two rails.”
Riders: “Pretty much everybody who lived in China and snowboarded. About 20 or 30 Chinese nationals and foreigners, both female and male.”

2005
Winning trick: 540. Wang Lei (China)
Prizes: “Nokia sponsored the event that year so everyone got a free Nokia phone. This was back when Nokia phones were cool.”
Park setup: “We finally set up a real park that had a real kicker, a wall ride and a few rails.”
That was the year that … “The guy who ‘won’ didn’t even enter the competition. We got the press release wrong.”

2006
Winning trick: “I don’t really remember much about that year except that we had our first real sponsor, Snickers.”
Park setup: “We built a hip where the riders could fly over the crowd. That was fun.”
That was the year that … “We had a shitload of Snickers.”

2007
Winning trick: Frontside 7 Shifty Shifty.
Hampus Mossesson (Sweden)
Prizes: USD 10,000
Park setup: “We got sponsored by Red Bull so we could expand the park. We added four huge kickers and some crazy obstacles in the bottom of the park.”
Riders: “I ended up talking the TTR guys into giving the Nanshan Open a 3-star status. So we finally got some pro riders to enter.”
That was the year that … “One Austrian rider was afraid he would party too hard so he put his passport under his mattress. By the time he found it, he’d already applied for a new one and had to stay ten days longer.”

2008
Winning trick: 700 followed by 540. Jacob Wilhelmson (Sweden)
Prizes: USD 10,000
Riders: “There began to be too many good Chinese riders, so we added a qualifying round. The top six riders moved on to the finals with the European pros.”
Park setup: “A huge tabletop about 10m tall and 10m long, with a hip built into the side.”

2009
Winning trick: BS540 followed by a Cab540. Freddy Austbo (Norway)
Prizes: USD 25,000
Park setup: “We built some crazy new obstacles in the bottom of the park that year. We had a 400m3 butterbox.”
Riders: “We got our TTR status moved up to four stars that year. Also, the financial crisis meant that Japan and Korea canceled their events, making the Nanshan Open the biggest TTR event in Asia.”

2010
Winning trick: Switch backside 900 mute followed by a frontside 720 melon. Juuso Laivisto (Finland)
Prizes: USD 25,000
Park setup: “We had a huge up-cannon with a big gap before the landing. Marco Swoboda scored a cover shot with that one.”
That was the year that … “One Australian rider called from the airport because he didn’t know you needed a visa to enter China. He was stuck in customs for a whole day before we could get him out.”

2011
Winning trick: Four 900s in two runs. Janne Korpi (Finland)
Prizes: USD 25,000
Park setup: ”The famous double kicker line above a rotation through the season of a rainbow box, a post, a wall ride, a mianbao che, a curved box, a butterbox, a funbox, two down rails, a down-up box, a kink box, two mini wallrides, a pipe and a cannon.”
Riders: ”He Wei placed eighth overall, beating out several pro European riders with a frontside 720 to frontside rodeo method. It’s the highest a Chinese rider has ever placed at any TTR event.”

2012
Winning trick: Find out on January 15
Prizes: USD 50,000
Park setup: Head there to check it out. Or see the photos at www.mellowparks.cn.
Riders: The Nanshan Open now has five-star TTR status, making it an important stop to qualify for the World Snowboarding Championships. The new status is luring top riders to China, including Austin Smith (USA), Juuso Laivisto (FIN), Nils Arvidson (SWE) and Atsushi Ishikawa (JAP).
That was the year that … The Nanshan Open turns 10!

The 10th Nanshan Open takes place on Jan 14 & 15. For more details, see www.mellowparks.cn.

Click here to see the January issue of the Beijinger in full.

Photos: mellowparks.cn