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Riders Announced For Dew Tour 2016 Team Showdown

Snowboard legends enlisted to captain Burton, DC, Lib Tech and more

We were a little disappointed to learn that the Dew Tour’s plans for a ‘modified superpipe’ have been put on hold due to inappropriate conditions.

After the success of Danny Davis’ Peace Park, it would have been nice to see the format applied to a more ‘serious’ contest. Who knows, it could perhaps have gone on to serve as the foundation for a new-look competitive snowboard tour

“Six snowboard companies have been invited to field a three-man team, consisting of a captain, a ‘jumps’ rider and a ‘jibs’ rider”

Alas, the snow gods are not onside this year. It’s not a problem that other, more mainstream events have to deal with – no-one, for example, is worried that there might not be enough grass to run Wimbledon.

Given that it’s no-one’s fault when the snow doesn’t arrive, it might have been fun to see the organisers say “Hey, them’s the breaks – we’re going to pile what snow we have into one big hip, and have a jam on that”. As it stands, however, they’ve just scrubbed the pipe comp to focus on slopestyle, “streetstyle” and the team jam.

The latter is an interesting one. Six snowboard companies have been invited to field a three-man team, consisting of a captain, a ‘jumps’ rider and a ‘jibs’ rider (there would have been a pipe guy too, but naturally that’s not the case anymore).

We’re not yet sure exactly what involvement the captains – all of whom are veterans rather than active competitive riders – will have, but here’s how the teams break down:

Burton's Mark McMorris - game face. Photo: Sami Touriniemi

1) Burton

Team Captain: Terje Haakonsen
Jumps: Mark McMorris
Jibs: Darcy Sharpe

Realistically, who else was going to captain the big B? Terje will oversee two Shredbots, one of whom is among the most decorated contest riders around.

These guys spend an unholy amount of time in the park – whatever the setup ends up looking like, there’s a good chance these guys will shut it down.

Seb Toots may know his way around a kicker, but he’ll be on the rails for Nitro. Photo: Sami Touriniemi

2) Nitro

Team Captain: Jeremy Jones
Jumps: Marcus Kleveland
Jibs: Sebastien Toutant

He’ll always be Jibbin’ Jeremy to us, but Jez is taking captain’s duties for this one while Seb Toots is assigned to the rails.

The Canadian’s machine-like consistency is not to be under-estimated – and with wunderkind Marcus Kleveland on the jumps, this could well be Nitro’s to lose.

Lib Tech's Tyler Nicholson, showing off his kicker chops in Laax. Photo: Sam McMahon

3) Lib Tech

Team Captain: Mark Landvik
Jumps: Tyler Nicholson
Jibs: Ted Borland

Travis Rice‘s sidekick is in charge of Lib, and his underlings are plucked from two of snowboarding’s finest crews.

Tyler is a Shredbot through and through, while Ted has logged multiple seasons filming for Think Thank. If anyone knows how to make a crew of riders add up to more than the sum of its parts, it’s them.

The WST Men’s slopestyle podium (L-R): Max Parrot, Ride’s Brandon Davis, Stale Sandbech. Photo: Sami Touriniemi

4) Ride

Team Captain: Jake Welch
Jumps: Brandon Davis
Jibs: Reid Smith

We’ve seen little of Jake in recent years, other than his cameo in old mucker Pat Moore’s movie Mr. Plant, but here is is heading up the Ride team.

Brandon Davis is the reigning WST slopestyle champ, so he’ll have no problems on the kicker line. Meanwhile Reid is always impressive in the jib-heavy summer edits from Mount Hood, so we expect him to do well here too.

Torstein throws another hammer for DC. Photo: Matt Georges

5) DC

Team Captain: Devun Walsh
Jumps: Torstein Horgmo
Jibs: Jordan Morse

Before he embraced the BC backcountry full-time, Devun was a successful contest kid, so that experience will probably come in handy.

That said, what can you tell Torstein about winning that he doesn’t already know?

Jordan Morse, meanwhile, has been making light work of the rails at Park City for a few years now.

O Captain My Captain: Salomon's Chris Grenier leads by example in Denver. Photo: Andy Wright

6) Salomon

Team Captain: Chris Grenier
Jumps: Hans Mindnich
Jibs: Jesse Paul

Realistically, all Grenier needs to do to bring Salomon victory is point Jesse Paul at the rail line, wind the key in his back, and release. The man is insanely good.

If Hans ‘brother of Nils‘ Mindnich can hold up his end on the jumps, it could be a good day for this team.

 

 

Which team is your money on? Does snowboarding need more of this kind of comp? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.

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