The 31st annual Burton US Open Snowboarding Championships presented by MINI is excited to announce an impressive list of confirmed riders, all on deck to compete at the sport’s most legendary event taking place in Vail, Colorado from February 25th – March 2nd, 2013. One of this year’s female contestants, Danika Duffy, hails from Manhattan Beach and will be participating in the event’s slopestyle competition. Duffy is a Mira Costa graduate who left high school during her senior year to focus on snowboarding while living & riding at Mammoth Mountain according to an article published last week in the Beach Reporter. Duffy may one day get a chance to represent the United States as a genuine Olympic athlete now that the International Olympic Committee has officially assigned slopestyle competition for snowboarding and skiing to its Winter Olympic roster of events, effective 2014. The next Winter Olympics will take place in Sochi, Russia.
Burton US Open Snowboarding Championships (1996)
A slopestyle event takes a snowboarder on a downhill trajectory through a custom built terrain park where a methodical array of jibs, rails, spines, boxes and other types of obstacles are laid out so that each rider can showcase a mixed bag of tricks & spins. Typically, the rider who performs his/her run with the most amplitude, style, and technical ability wins the contest. Not wiping out is a big factor too. The US Open kicks off on February 26, with the women’s slopestyle finals scheduled for March 1.
Snowboarding has taken Duffy all over the globe to places like Oslo (Norway), New Zealand, and Switzerland. In 2012, Duffy actually came close to qualifying for the U.S. Open but was unable to compete due to injury.