Next SBX World Cup stop at Big White Ski Resort
Jan 08, 2020·Snowboard Cross
Big White Ski Resort is getting excited for its first ever snowboard cross World Cup event on January 25-26 and so are we! After a short Christmas break and some time off to recharge batteries, it is time for the athletes to prepare and be ready for competition later this month.
It will be the first time that the FIS Snowboard Cross World Cup will take to the slopes of British Columbia’s Big White Ski Resort for the Barrels & Berms competition and it will be the first SBX World Cup on Canadian soil in over six years.
Big White Ski Resort is located 56 km southeast of Kelowna in the Southern Interior of British Columbia. Located on Big White Mountain, the highest summit in the Okanagan Highland, an upland area between the Monashee Mountains and the Okanagan Valley, it is the third largest resort in British Columbia, after Whistler-Blackcomb and Sun Peaks.
The mountain summit is at 2,319 m with a vertical drop of 777 m, serviced by 16 lifts. The mountain receives 750 cm of annual snowfall. It has 11 km2 of overall skiable terrain.
The event will feature both an individual World Cup and a mixed team event.
The team snowboard cross event made its World Cup debut back in the 2012/13 competition season at selected stops on the SBX World Cup Tour.
As with standard four-aside snowboard cross events, the team competition works in a knockout bracket format, with four teams racing head-to-head in heats and the top two teams from each heat making their way forward towards the eventual big final.
Unlike a standard snowboard cross event, the team event functions as a two-competitor-per-team relay, with the second member of the team released from the start gate as soon as the first member of their team has crossed the finish line. The first team to have both competitors across the finish line in the big final is, of course, the winner.
Up until this point, the team SBX event has featured separate teams for men’s and ladies’ competitions. That will now change as we move towards the “mixed” format’s inclusion in the Beijing 2022 Games, which will feature one men’s competitor and one ladies’ competitor per team.
With the addition of the mixed team event, the Beijing 2022 Olympic Winter Games will now feature 11 snowboard competitions in total.
Athletes are in full training mode before they will enter into the start gate and get the next World Cup action in. Stay tuned as we will publish our Big White Ski Resort event preview soon with detailed info on the competition schedule, TV exposure, live streaming info and more.
QUICK LINKS
Big White Ski resort data page (live timing/brackets and results)
