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Season Review: Snowboarding
FIS Race Director for Snowboarding, Uwe Beier had a chance to evaluate the past season of the LG Snowboard FIS Snowboard World Cup and share some of his thoughts about the way forward.
Q: How was the season 2010/2011 in your view?
Uwe Beier: This was my first season in the role of FIS Race Director for Snowboarding. Overall I would say we had a very good season. This is mostly because I feel we were able to improve the quality of our competitions in all events, especially when it comes to snow and sports organization. Some examples of this include that we staged all half-pipe events in 22 feet pipes which were well-shaped. Also, all our parallel events were carried out in great conditions and we had excellent big air events with strong side events.
Our focus this season was on perfect sport organization and I am pleased that we were able to systematically deliver on that goal. With the help of Roby Moresi who was new in the role of Assistant Race Director and is a real professional in Freestyle Snowboarding, we made a big step forward in enhancing the quality. Having Roby onboard allowed our course builders and halfpipe shapers to concentrate on their main tasks while I was able to focus on the parallel and SBX events which helped us leverage all the team members' strengths optimally.
Q: What was the season highlight for you?
Uwe Beier: For me the real season highlight was the World Snowboard Championships in La Molina. Given the weather conditions we were dealing with, the effort that was invested by the Organizers to stage a truly world class event cannot be underestimated. It was impressive since the amount of snow that was needed was substantial, and not easily achieved given the very warm temperatures there in January. Not to be forgotten is the late addition of slopestyle to the World Championship program. It required great effort but was a great opportunity which we together with organizers were able to leverage to the full benefit of the sport.
Q. Looking into the future, what are the key parameters and focus areas?
Uwe Beier: While we were able to improve this season across the board, we also still have some room for further improvement. We did have some setbacks like the cancellation of the SBX event in Korea after the teams were on site which was very regretable. Overall we saw that the requirements for top level snowboard cross events are especially high, particularly in terms of amounts of snow required and the preparation time and resources, in order for us to be prepared for all eventualities from the weather gods.
In the future, we will be increasing our focus more on the event side of organization, to developing the side events and growing the general size of the World Cup events, from the number of spectators and caliber of participants to prize money and beyond.
We will also be working on growing our cooperation with the other global Snowboarding tours on the freestyle side. We believe we should be working together to best promote the riders and our discipline. One of the focus areas will be calendar planning to ensure that all the major events have the prominent place they deserve and enable the best riders to participate through logistical coordination. We are also discussing opportunities for cooperation in terms of basic qualification for Olympic participation at major events.