Dew Tour Awards & Big Air

Words: Allisports.com
Photos: Matt Stauble

The Winter Dew Tour’s Toyota Championship at Mount Snow Resort in West Dover, Vermont concluded on Saturday night, marking the end of the 2009-10 season. The Dew Cup Awards Ceremony marked the end of the year, honoring the top athletes from the three-stop Tour.

The season-end award recipients are as follows:

The coveted Dew Cup is awarded to the top-ranked athlete and overall points leader in each of the Tour’s six disciplines. In Freeski Superpipe, Jossi Wells received the top honor after an amazing showing on the Tour, while Andreas Håtveit took home the Cup in Freeski Slopestyle.

Jossi Wells

The Dew Cup

In addition to the Dew Cups, a quiver of other awards were given out over the course of the evening, honoring the top athletes in freeskiing and snowboarding for their performance on this year's Winter Dew Tour.
 
Athlete of the Year – Andreas Håtveit – Honors the male and female athlete who earned the most overall points in any one discipline during the 2009-10 Winter Dew Tour season.

Andreas Håtveit

Rookie of the Year, presented by Ball Park – Andreas Håtveit – The rookies with the highest number of points in snowboarding and freeskiing are each honored.

Trick of the Year – Halldor Helgasson...for his double cork frontside 1080, performed in snowboard slopestyle at the Totino’s Open at Breckenridge, Colorado – The athlete who performed the single best trick throughout the three-stop Winter Dew Tour season.  

Mike Riddle

Performance of the Year, brought to you by PowerBar – Mike Riddle...for his huge second run during finals at the Totino’s Open in Breckenridge, which allowed him to come up through the pack and win the event – Recognizing a single performance by an athlete that may be either the highest score or one that was clutch under pressure when it was needed.

Elias Ambuhl

Breakthrough Athlete of the Year – Elias Ambuhl...who came in new to the Winter Dew Tour as an Open Qualifier, winning the OQ round. As a Tour rookie, Ambuhl showed his consistency and finished seventh overall – Voted on by the athletes, this award recognizes an athlete who does something that surpasses expectations.

During the four-day freeski and snowboard competition, approximately 33,000 fans experienced the Toyota Championship – the highest event attendance in the two-year history of the Winter Dew Tour – also breaking the record for highest-single day attendance with 15,000 attending on Saturday.

“The past four days of the Winter Dew Tour have been terrific, and we couldn’t be more excited with the turn out,” said Kelly Pawlak, General Manager of Mount Snow Resort. “Our numbers for the weekend are up from the five-year average. It’s always great to get more people out to Mount Snow to experience the mountain at Carinthia.”

Yesterday's events at the Toyota Championship included the finals for the Gatorade Free Flow Tour, the official amateur series of the Winter Dew Tour (which we'll full have coverage on soon), along with a freeski specialty competition – the Toyota Tricktopsy Big Air Presented by realPlayer – on the final feature of the slopestyle course.

Bobby Brown

Colby James West

Elias Ambuhl

Joe Schuster

Jossi Wells

Tom Wallisch

Top freeski athletes like Bobby Brown, Colby West, Elias Ambuhl, Joe Schuster, Jossi Wells and Tom Wallisch threw out their best tricks during the 30-minute jam session, and Gus Kenworthy came out as the winner with his cork 900 nose grab to true tail grab.

Gus Kenworthy

That's all for this year's Winter Dew Tour. We'll see you next year!