Blue bird skies during the men’s heats gave way to snow showers and tough visibility for the women as the Chevy Truck U.S. Snowboard Grand Prix superpipe qualifier exploded from Breckenridge Friday. Leading the way for the men with a score of 46.90 was ’02 Olympian Tommy Czeschin (Mammoth Lakes, CA) with a mixed bag of big amplitude and solid rotations. Gretchen Bleiler (Snowmass Village, CO), Park City’s second place finisher, led the women with 44.60 points.

U.S. Snowboard team riders took the top three spots on both sides as Rob Kingwill (Jackson Hole, WY) and Rick Bower (Park City, UT) rounded out the men’s top three, while Tricia Byrnes (New Canaan, CT) and Park City winner Hannah Teter (Belmont, VT) went 2-3 for the women. Nine of the 11 U.S. Snowboard team members will ride in Saturday’s event including 12-year-old Luke Mitrani (Stratton, VT) for his first Grand Prix final.

“We’re very excited about how things went today,” said Assistant Halfpipe Coach Bud Keene. “Ideally we’d like to have everyone in, but you can’t complain about today’s results – everyone rode extremely well, but tomorrow’s the main event and we’ll see if we can keep it rolling in to the final.”

“The pipe was really good,” said Czeschin, who jumped into to the top spot with a huge corked 720 to a cab 720. “There were a few rough spots during yesterday’s training, but they did a great job working on the pipe last night. I put down a solid first run and then went out and had fun on the second – today was all about getting to ride tomorrow.”

For Bleiler, the qualifier was about getting her Crippler (frontside grab inverted 540) nailed down. “I seriously started working on it in Park City, but during training I just kept trying it over and over until I started landing them consistently. I landed flat on it today, but got the rotation around – I’ll have it ready to go for the finals.”

Poor vision became factor as snow moved in during the women’s heats, making it tough for the riders to see the walls and more importantly their landings. Two to four inches are expected throughout the night making the pipe a bit softer for the final.

Saturday’s finals kick off at 11:00 a.m. with 16 men and eight women competing. The best of three runs will determine who takes home the $10,000 first place check. Then the big show takes to the sky as the Yahoo! Big Air and Style Exhibition gets underway at 7:00 p.m. with a floodlit showcase on two mammoth table tops separated by a 65 foot gap transfer.

— Courtesy, U.S. Snowboard Team