West Vancouver (BC), Canada – Canadian Alpine Snowboarding Team coach Sylvain Jean, Freestyle coach Jesse Fulton and BC Provincial Team coach Chris Nakonechny will be coaching the Canadian delegation traveling to the 2010 FIS World Snowboard/Freestyle Ski Junior Championships held in Wanaka, New Zealand, from Aug. 21 through 31, officials at Canada~Snowboard have announced.nJean will be leading the alpine snowboarding team taking part in the event. He coached the Canadian Alpine Snowboarding Team to 12 FIS World Cup medals last season, as well as coaching Jasey-Jay Anderson to an Olympic Gold Medal and FIS World Championships title in Parallel Giant Slalom. Jean is also a recipient of 2009 Petro-Canada Coaching Excellence Awards.
Fulton privately coaches freestyle riders, Canadian Halfpipe Champion Palmer Taylor (Collingwood, Ontario) and National Team member Derek Livingston (Aurora, Ontario), two hopefuls for great results at this event in New Zealand. Fulton owns and operates Icarus Snowboard, a private coaching enterprise with young and talented riders at the grassroots level.
Vancouver’s Nakonechny, a veteran with two World Junior Championships appearances under his belt, currently coaches five of the eight Snowboardcross riders participating at the event. Nakonechny is the Head Coach for Snowboardcross with the British Columbia Provincial Snowboard Team. Nakonechny coached the Canadian team at the 2008 and 2009 World Junior Championships in Valmalenco, Italy, and Nagano, Japan. Nakonechny is the Director and Club Founder of the North Shore Snowboard Team.
Robert Joncas, Canada~Snowboard Manager of High Performance, will be on-site as the Team Leader for a fifth consecutive World Junior Championships.
Rider changes
Four athletes have opted out of the Canadian line-up for personal reasons. In order to fill the void and send a full delegation, Ziggy Cowan (Banff, Alberta), Indrik Trahan (Trois-Rivières, Quebec), Jade Depont (Oka, Quebec) and Jeremy Page (Nova Scotia) will be joining the team.
Tayler Wilton (Toronto, Ontario), Aurélye-Deschênes-Hudon (Ste-Jeanne d’Arc, Quebec), Jessica Herron (Oakville, Ontario) and Cora Fellows (Mississauga, Ontario) made their personal decision to opt out of the delegation.
The event will be taking place in three different venues near Wakana, New Zealand. Snow Park NZ will host the slopestyle competitions, while Treble Cone ski area is set to host the snowboard parallel giant slalom and snowboard parallel slalom events. Cardrona Alpine Resort, site of previous Halfpipe World Cup competition, will stage the halfpipe, snowboardcross and snowboard big air.