Dear Snowboard Community,

What a hectic month of riding and competing highlighted by the SBX Futures and ANC’s held at Hotham and the two final events for the FIS Junior SBX Series Powered by the Chumpy Pullin Foundation held at Mt Hotham and Perisher.

Congratulations to Lara Walsh and Max Vardy for being crowned the overall FIS Junior SBX champions. The top 3 overall leader board results are as follows:

Women’s 
1.    Lara Walsh    
2.    Abbey Wilson
3.    Tara Jones

Men’s
1.    Max Vardy
2.    Will McCarthy
3.    Cameron Turner    

The full leader board can be found on the JNR Series Webpage. 

A massive thank you to each of the resort partners, the Chumpy Pullin Foundation and its partners including XTM for making this event possible. 

There also was some great racing at the Snowboard Cross Australian New Zealand Cup (ANC) at Mt Hotham. 

The festival kicked off with a Futures camp featuring some of Australia’s best young SBX riders. The SBX FUTURES is a Talent Identification (TID) and skill development initiative by Snow Australia with support from the OWIA and NSWIS Athletes and Coaches. The program is designed to lead into the SBX FIS Junior and ANC Races. Participants were given an authentic high-performance training experience over two days on course with the OWIA SBX Team. 

The Futures was followed by four days of intensive racing featuring Groms, Jnr FIS and three ANC events.

Congratulations to Josie Baff and Adam Lambert who took first place in the series results. Josie won all three women’s events and Adam Lambert won out two of the three men’s races.

The top 3 overall series results are as follows:

Women’s 
1.    Josie Baff
2.    Amber Essex
3.    Taya Lilli-Dent

Men’s
4.    Adam Lambert
5.    Cameron Bolton
6.    Takeru Tebakari ( Japan)

Good luck to all for the balance of the season.

Rob Dickson
Chair- National Snowboard Committee

The highly anticipated final stop of the of the FIS JNR SBX Series, powered by the Chumpy Pullin Foundation, took place in challenging conditions at Perisher this week.

The snow and wind were unable to stifle the competitive fire brought by all athletes, with the Chumpy Pullin Trophy on the line in both divisions for the overall Series Winner.

A pair of new event winners emerged from the heat battles, with Tara Jones and Will McCarthy taking out the Perisher stop.

Snowboard Cross Beijing 2022 Olympians Josie Baff and Adam Lambert have shown their dominant form during the domestic season, taking out the Snowboard Cross Australian New Zealand Cup (ANC) 2022 titles.

Their overall ANC crowns come off the back of the three-event race series held at Mt Hotham in September 2022.

Baff ends the domestic season with the maximum 300 points after winning gold in all three events. She won the title ahead of up-and-coming riders Amber Essex (220 points) and Taya-Lilli Dent (170 points).

Baff told the OWIA that she was stoked with her pre-season training and on-snow results, which have primed her nicely for the upcoming international season.

Each month the Snow Australia Snowboard Committee will put the spotlight on an Australian Snowboard athlete to learn more about them as they train and compete around the World. This month we hear from Josie Baff on how her hunger for snowboardcross drives her to be the best.

Without many FIS races under my belt, I wasn't really sure how my riding was compared to international competitors. I went into my first European Cup in France with very low expectations of where I would place. However, after qualifying the first day and finishing 3rd the next, I knew what I was capable of. Nevertheless, I knew I would have a lingering sense of disappointment if I fell short of what I believed was possible...

While the Australian Interschools Championships are open to students from every state and territory in Australia, there’s no doubt students from NSW, ACT, South Australia, QLD and Victoria are more heavily represented.

However a young snowboarder from Tasmania has emerged as a stand-out performer.

Oliver Walsh from Sacred Heart Primary School in Ulverstone, Tasmania won gold in both the Boys Division 4 Snowboard Giant Slalom and Snowboard Cross events at this week’s National Championships at Perisher Resort.

As the only representative from his school, and one of a handful of Tasmanians at the Australian Interschools this year, Walsh said he was really proud of his achievements.

To say that there was a race to the end of the season is an understatement.

Over the last four weeks we have seen: SnowAUS Interschools State events conclude in the various resorts, Mount Hotham host the SnowAUS SBX Futures program, the 3rd Junior FIS race and the ANC’s (Australian and New Zealand Championships), Perisher host the SnowAUS Interschools Nationals, together with the 4th and Final Junior FIS race, Each resort host a number of local events.

Time certainly passed like a heartbeat with competitors travelling between the various resorts to attend and compete in a number of events.  

We saw a number of different athletes place in varying positions throughout each event which only proves that the competition is strong in the sport of SBX. At the 4th event we saw the Groms and Youth aged riders displaying their talent on course which was fantastic to see and be a part of.

Congratulations to both Lara Walsh and Max Vardy in holding onto their lead positions in the Junior FIS Series. It came down to the line at the final race and there was certainly not a lot in it at the end. Well done to all of the other athletes who hotly contested each event.

A huge thank you to the Series sponsors, The Chumpy Pullin Foundation and XTM, the event co-ordinators, the resorts, and last but not least the parents & supporters, all of whom contributed toward making such a successful series, which is hoped remains for years to come.

During the off-season we plan to work on initiatives to improve communication among Community members and increase engagement through the TeamAPP profile which has been established. For those who are not connected, simply log into TeamApp and search for AUS Snowboard Community.

We wish everyone well for the off-season and look forward to being back in the New Year to do it all again in 2023.

Ride on,

SCWG