It looks like Australian snowboarder Torah Bright is on her way to winning her second TTR World Snowboard Tour championship, after she won the Women's halfpipe event at the US Open in Stratton, Vermont on Saturday, edging out Jenny Jones and Kelly Clark in the TTR rankings: but there's still one event left this season to decide who be the 2008 TTR World Snowboard Tour Women's Champion.
After Friday's extreme weather, which Torah admitted scared her during Slopestyle, she showed no sign of nerves as bluebird skies opened up over Saturday's halfpipe competition, for the final event in the Burton Global Open Snowboard Series and decider of who will receive the winner's cheque of $100,000.
With 22 foot walls, hardpacked and icy, the superpipe was running fast with riders boosting out of the walls; sixteen year old Connecticut hot shot Ellery Hollingsworth grabbed attention with back to back 720 spins, then back to back 540s, solid landings then chucked a backside 900 on her second run - the only one thrown by a lady that day. Claire Bidez also three a 900, of the huge frontside variety, but it was three former US Open halfpipe champs - Torah, Kelly Clark and Gretchen Bleiler - who reached the podium.
As the Vermont weather started to draw in, teasing with the earlier clear skies, you could see the three were slightly disappointed with their runs - but they still all went huge. Gretchen threw her signature crippler and a big frontside 900, which took her into second, and Kelly boosted massively as expected, landing an epic frontside 900 also. But, despite not going as big, it was Torah's inclusion of a technical switch backside 720 that landed her with 83.7 points and first place.
Will she win this year's TTR title though? We'll find out at this weekend's Roxy Chicken Jam Slopestyle competition; currently in fourth place in the TTR women's rankings Jenny Jones would have been a contender - but is most probably out of the series ender with a broken coccyx (she was heard crying 'get me to a hospital' after her final Slopestyle run on Friday). Not so much a Slopestyle rider third place rider Kelly Clark is not likely to compete, but it's whippersnapper Jamie Anderson, currently World Number 2 and just nine points behind Torah, that will really challenge her for the top spot - especially with her Tahoe toned professional park skills. Either way, you know it's going to be the most exciting women's event of the snowboard this season... I'm biting my nails already.
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Images: TTR