Image from World Snowboard Tour – Burton Open Slope 2012

If you’re a pro snowboarder looking for Olympic qualification but you don’t want to miss any of the TTR events or X Games, your life just got easier. TTR have given Aspen and Tignes a 6 star ranking (Aspen in the 2013 season and Tignes in 2014). In addition, according to this ESPN article, “TTR also will co-sanction the 2012-13 USSA Grand Prix competitions as 5Star events. The Grand Prix has been elevated to FIS World Cup status this year, so those events will count for Olympic qualification points as well as points on the World Snowboard Tour.”

I sincerely hope that the tours, points, qualifications and star rankings aren’t meant to mean anything to your average spectator because I read about this shit regularly and am still thoroughly confused. To everyone working on these competitions – sort it out. Having a large audience enjoying the whole tour is going to secure the future for everyone. Take a look at what Street League is doing for skateboarding. In the mean time, I guess we will have to read the comp results armed with a spreadsheet, calculator and a rule book the size of the Yellow Pages just to work out what the win means for each competitor.