| Zak Stone and Jamie Anderson wins Billabong Bro Down 2009 | ||||
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 A late entrant on the morning of the event, Stone left his best until his last run of the day when he stomped a corked backside 1080 to score 27.7 out of a possible 30 points for the win. Stone was ranked 178th on the Tour and has now moves into world no. 60 on the rankings after his win today, the first of his career. “I stomped that jump for the first time ever today” commented Stone in reference to his corked backside 1080 adding “I was pretty happy about that after falling the first two jumps”. The perfectly executed jump was even more impressive considering the often difficult conditions today. “It was a little bit windy but the weather for the finals improved somewhat” said Stone. Stone had been languishing amongst the bottom placed finalists before his last of three runs which edged him ahead of Takahra Nakai (JPN) in second and top placed New Zealand rider Mark Anderson (Queenstown, NZ) in third. Under pressure on his final run of the event Takahara knew he had to leave nothing to chance to edge past Stone. Nailing a cab 900 he scored 26.7 coming up just short of Stone’s score to finish second. Local snowboarder Anderson led the finals from the outset scoring 25.5 on his first jump after stomping a clean switch backside 900 only to be ousted from first place during the final three runs of the event. Top ranked TTR rider going into the event, Seppe Smits (BEL), placed fifth today and has moved into world no. 9 improving from his current ranking of 21st. Current Swatch TTR Women’s World Snowboard Tour leader Jamie Anderson (USA) continued her exceptional run of form winning the Women’s event and in doing so retaining her Tour lead after the final event of the Southern Hemisphere leg of the TTR. “I feel pretty good at the moment” said Anderson. “The conditions were good, they could always be worse. But the wind was blowing in all directions and the jump was a little sketchy but it was fun”. Anderson has tasted sweet success several times at this Billabong event winning for the past three years. |