Lake Wanaka, New Zealand – The world’s best snowboard and skier cross athletes are taking advantage of a new purpose-built World Cup course during an elite training camp at Cardrona Alpine Resort in New Zealand.

With the Winter Olympics qualifying period for ski and snowboard cross kicking off in December the camp has attracted the current world champion Alex Pullin (AUS), Olympic gold medallist Seth Wescott (USA) as well as national teams and representatives from the U.S., Russia, Norway, Australia and Slovenia, all looking for valuable training time.

The 14-day training camp is key for all the athletes ahead of the first World Cup in Austria this December. The course culminates with the FIS Snowboard Cross and Skier Cross (ANC) Continental Cup being staged from Monday through Thursday of next week at Cardrona.

Winter Games CEO, Arthur Klap is thrilled to be supporting the development of World Cup standard courses and arenas for the region.

“It has been extremely exciting to have such a high caliber of international athletes training in the Wanaka and Queenstown area this winter season,” he said. “The popularity of this camp certainly suggests we have achieved our goal of providing a quality snowboard cross course in the Southern Hemisphere with athletes looking to get training in ahead of next year’s Winter Games and the Olympics six months later.”

A joint initiative between Winter Games New Zealand and Cardrona Alpine Resort, the course was purpose built and shaped by Sweden’s Anders Forsell for the training camp and as the course for next year’s Snowboard Cross World Cup event which will feature on the Winter Games NZ schedule. Forsell has designed and built snow parks around the world. He has completed multiple commissions for FIS World Cup arenas and is now involved with the Sochi 2014 Olympic courses.

The training camp began on Sept. 4 and will continue through to the end of this week.