The oldest and final event on the World Snowboard Tour is steeped in snowboarding pedigree, from the days of downhill racing to slopestyle cruising: the Burton US Open has seen it all.
It all kicked off in 1982 under the name of the National Snowboarding Championships, but it wasn’t until 1988 that a halfpipe discipline was introduced and we had to wait until 2002 to see slopestyle make its debut appearance in Vermont.
The Burton US Open has been the catalyst to launch many a snowboarder into stardom. Looking over the previous start lists, names like Terje Haakonsen, Daniel Franck, Jake Blauvelt, Gigi Rüf, Bryan Iguchi, Hana Beaman and David Benedek pop up like a snowboarding version of “Who’s Who?’
Whether it be Terje’s arrival on the scene in 1992, the post-Olympic 1998 US Open, the first ever superpipe back in 2005 or the first ever Burton Global Open Series winners Chas Guldemond and Jamie Anderson taking home their $100,000 dollar cheques.
Our favourite moment? Watching Terje poach runs during the 2004 finals and giving the public a good lesson in how to pull a method.