Schedule, Details Announced For Inaugural AST Winter Dew Tour
July 14, 2008 – 10:08 am PT by GregTags: AST —
The dates and locations for the first-ever AST Winter Dew Tour were announced this morning via a conference call with AST President Wade Martin.
The dates and locations are:
Stop 1: December 18-21, 2008 — Breckenridge Ski Resort – Breckenridge, Colo.
Stop 2: January 8-11, 2009 — Mount Snow Resort – West Dover, Vt.
Stop 3: February 19-22, 2009 — Northstar-at-Tahoe Resort – Lake Tahoe, Calif
The winter tour features slopestyle and superpipe events for snowboarding and freeskiing, with divisions for both men and women. It also features a points system, like the summer tour, with male/female tour champions being crowned in four disciplines with the Dew Cup after the final stop. There is an overall purse of $1.5 million being awarded.
Top athletes from across snowboarding and skiing are expected to attend, including freeskier Simon Dumont and snowboarding Olympic gold medalist Hannah Teter, who also took part on this morning’s conference call.
Teter will compete in both events, marking her first appearance on slopestyle since before the Olympics.
“The prize purse is huge,” she said, noting she donates all her prize money to charity.
As far as television coverage, Martin promised similar coverage to the summer tour, with 10 hours of primaily-live programming on NBC, six hours on USA and 12-15 hours on MTV networks.
Thanks to the TV coverage and prize purse, Dumont said, “I feel like everything’s going to go to a higher level.”
While in the future athletes will qualify for the tour thanks to their previous experience on it, for the kick-off they will be prequalified based on other criteria. However, there will be an Open Qualifier system for other pro athletes to be able to make the finals.
For more info check out AST.com — the site doesn’t have much winter tour info yet, but may soon.
