We just finished up our summer trip to New Zealand and it’s official, the 2012/13 season has begun. And really, the 2014 Olympic qualification process has also begun. The first FIS World Cup in Cardrona, (which I was so happy to win, wild New Zealand weather and all) marks the start of this season but also the 2014 Olympic qualification process.

Qualifying for the Olympics is a pretty intense and interesting process. Each nation has its own set of qualifications to field their national teams (in the US, we use the Grand Prix series) but before any of that can begin each nation has to earn the designated quota spots to compete at the Olympics. To break it down, each country can have four athletes in each gender and in each event compete at the Olympics but in order to do so four athletes from each nation have to be in the top 30 of the FIS ranking system come January 1st 2014. In addition to that anyone who wants to compete for their nation in one of those four spots has to have a top 25 finish in a FIS World Cup. It seems simple and if our sport was like ski racing where everyone has to compete on one single tour governed by FIS then it would be but because as snowboarders we have our own snowboard run events and our own World Tour not sanctioned by FIS things can get complicated and makes this year’s schedule hectic and action packed. Not only will we be competing at the Opens, the X Games, Dew Tour and Grand Prixs but we also have to fit in a handful of FIS World Cups. So, winning the Cardrona World Cup was a nice way to kick off the season and makes getting to the next year and a half a little bit easier.

Here are some photos from Cardies, good times with the crew and great riding from all the ladies!

Peguin and me and my yellow jersey

Hannah Teter


Even had time for a little golf with Scotty and Matt after the finals…good thing I am better at snowboarding than I am at golf. Almost ruined a good contest day by topping it off with bad golfing 

Tags: new zealand, olympics, snowboarding