Teva Announces Significant Prize Money for Queenstown Slopestyle Event

The Teva Slopestyle event is being staged for the first time in downtown Queenstown on the evening of the 5th April during the Queenstown Bike Festival and will offer an impressive cash purse of $10,000 in prize money.

Slopestyle is a popular type of competition which originated as a snowboarding event format but shifted to many other sports, including bikes mounted by gutsy "freeriders".

Today's best riders have transformed this discipline of mountain biking into a sport of best tricks judged for style and difficulty.

The goal of the competition is to perform the most difficult tricks while getting the highest amplitude off the jumps.

The slopestyle course will be situated in downtown Queenstown in the Ballarat Street car park, and is designed and built by some of the best in the business.

Kelly McGarry is New Zealand's premier slopestyle rider and represents New Zealand at big contests all over the world.

Co-designer Tom Hey has worked on many of the most prestigious slopestyle courses including the infamous Crankworx in Whistler and Colorado. 

The plans are for a 5 hit design featuring earthworks and wooden features, starting with a six metre lip drop followed by a Quarter leading to a bank hip jump, straight into a Crankworx style step up step down fruit bowl and then dropping into a final super booter.

Freeriders will use the massive jumps and drops to wow the twilight crowd with tricks such as flatspins, can-cans, flips and Supermans, while literally challenging the laws of gravity.

Pro and amateur riders will get two runs, and the best run, assessed by three judges, will be the basis for first determining the best five contestants. Following will be another run which will determine the overall slopestyle winner of the night.
The slopestyle cash purse will be distributed to the Pro competitors down to 5th place, with the overall Pro winner taking $3000 home while amateurs will share another $600 cash prize.

The slopestyle will be immediately followed by the Teva Best Trick showdown, which will be a 20 minute jam session open to slopestyle and BMX riders who will try to wow the crowd and judges to win the remaining $2250 of cash prize.

The best trick award will provide $1000 to its winner, while $750 will be distributed in notes of $20 and $50 for the coolest, funniest or best crashes of the night.

Spectators are invited to watch from 6pm onwards, and well know local mountain bikers Tony Moore "T Man" and Matt Smith will be providing the commentaries on the night.

For more detail, check the Queenstown Bike Festival web site www.queenstownbikefestival.com