Perfect blue-sky day and a world-class snowboard park at Falls Creek Australia for the first day of Stylewars 2007.

The park set up included a perfectly groomed monster step down jump (120 foot to the knuckle), a huge spine, a rail line and a three (3) hit mellow kicker line.

Today’s morning two-hour jam session was on the kicker line and riders nominated their judged runs at will, which allowed for a fun easy session.

The judges had specified at the riders meeting that “it is Stylewars, so style is the most important factor in scoring”. With this in mind most shredders were laying down the stylish, solid snowboarding we all love to see – slow spins boned tricks, steez and some random backflips and double shifty’s.

Highlights in the morning triple jump session included Torstein Horgmo (NOR) with an annihilating smooth styled run of switch backside 9, frontside 9, into a switch backside 7 (with Snus in the mouth) but Jacob Koia (NZE) dropped a first place run onto the course with down under style with a switch backside 7, cab 5 and a backside 3 double shifty.

During the morning session, only one rider had big enough balls to step to the big kicker, that was Quentin Robbins of New Zealand. Andy Finch was out injured and heading home after his session yesterday, but that didn’t stop “Q-Diddy”. The 34-year old Kiwi living legend launched a huge backside 360 first hit going at least 80-100 km/h. The whole mountain went pretty crazy as he stomped it down 150 feet (50 meters) past the take off.

His next hit Q, stepped it up to a back fiver and the worst nightmare materialised. Quentin knuckled it, heel edge getting violently whipped and ejected on the still frozen landing. Incredibly he got up – with only a sore knee AND SNAPPED BOARD. Another of his nine lives now scratched.

Dustin Craven (CAN) then decided he should jump from the big kicker take off to the side of the landing 70 feet away, landing in 2 feet of mogul transition – freaking everyone out.

In the “arvo” (afternoon in Aussie Lingo) after the Sausage Sizzle “barbie” (BBQ) the riders were released out of the cage and onto the spine.

The left side of the landing was a little bit icy, but the right side was mint and luckily most riders were regular stance.
Stand out hits came from Dustin Craven (CAN) who boosted maybe the largest air – nose to crail double grab and Jaakko Ruha who launched a huge backside 9 indy to the end of the hip. Torstein Horgmo (NOR) officially took out the Hip session with a monster backside 7 super-styled and smooth.

The scores from both sessions were tallied and joined for the combined overall leader board. Two more days of competition are ahead where the overall winner will be the combination of all sessions.

Top 10 snowboarders after day 1:

1. Jakob Koia (NZE) 70.8
2. Torstein Horgmo (NOR) 69.4
3. Robbie Walker (AUS) 68.6
4. Jaakko Ruha (FIN) 67.9
5. Toni-Markus Turunen (FIN) 65.6
6. Ryan Tiene (AUS) 62.4
7. Wyatt Caldwell (USA) 60.1
8. Roland Morley-Brown (NZE) 55.1
9. Clint Allan (AUS) 55
10. Shayne Pospisil (USA) 53.8

Stylewars also includes the “Bledisnow Cup” an age-old battle between New Zealand and Australian snowboarders. The winning team is an accumulative score from the top five (5) riders from each country at the end of the event.
The winning team takes home a garden gnome.