The Arctic Challenge started out as a small project in 1999 and is now established as one of the greatest snowboard events in the world. It still has its independent roots and is the only 6 star TTR event that is owned and organised by a professional rider.
The event started as an invitational jam in Norway organised by the legend that is Terje Haakonsen. At the time it was an informal get together of 12 of the worlds best riders with no competition, just freeriding and surfing in freezing temperatures.
Over ten years later, the Arctic Challenge still experiments with formats but is now a serious competition where riders compete for glory and prestige. The event organisers still play around with the arenas, judging systems and media coverage in an ongoing search for perfection. The Arctic Challenge is Terje’s own version of the Olympics and ahs seen some incredible riding. In 2007 Terje broke the world record for jumping out of a quarterpipe with a ridiculous 9.8m air. That’s higher than two double decker buses!
Terje pushes his event organisation team to the limits in order to make the Arctic Challenge one of the worlds best events. Last year the hard work paid off as the riding in the halfpipe was out of this world! Iouri Podladtchikov stormed the halfpipe back to back 9’s and then back to back 10’s, Chinese rider Yiwei Zhang came out of nowhere to grab second place and 14 year old Japanese wonder kid, Ayumu Hirano skived off of school to take the bronze medal.