Breckenridge in Colorado, one of the first major resorts in the world to adopt the then cool new sport of snowboarding, is to celebrate 30 years of staging boarding competitions later this month.
The 4th annual Breck Throwback halfpipe competition will showcase just how far boarding has come overt the last three decades by asking 30 pro-boarders to compete both on a specially constructed six-foot mini-pipe that is an exact replica of the first one built at Breck in 1985, and on the resort’s current state-of-the-art 22-foot superpipe.
In homage to the 30 year anniversary, tricks no more than 540 degrees of rotation will be allowed, so each rider, competing for a $17,000 prize purse, will have to get creative with straight airs, alley oops, huge slow spins, and hand plants. The competition takes place on March 28th on the Superpipe at the top of Freeway in the morning, and at the Minipipe in lower Twister after lunch.
Breck’s was one of the first major resorts to allow snowboarding in the 1984-85 season and to host one of the initial major snowboard competitions in the industry, The World Snowboarding Championships, or “The World’s,” in 1986.
Breck solidified its place as the very pinnacle of freestyle snowboarding when it became the first-ever resort to have a permanent halfpipe then supersized it to a permanent Olympic-sized 22-foot superpipe in 2009, which anchors the resort’s award-winning Freeway Terrain Park on Peak 8.
Today Breckenridge has four terrain parks, including the top-ranked Freeway Terrain Park and SuperPipe and the Park Lane Terrain Park, a park progression system for beginners and intermediates.