Lake Wanaka, New Zealand – Slopestyle finals went off today at the 5Star Burton New Zealand Open at Cardrona Alpine Resort near Lake Wanaka. Event organizers had to modify the format to an all finals round due to weather delays, but the competition was able to run and 37 male and 19 female snowboarders made the best out of the low-visibility day in their run for a share of the NZ$50,000 prize purse.nOn the men’s side, Switzerland’s Christian Haller put together a clean run on the challenging course to take first place and slopestyle specialist, Jamie Anderson of the U.S., took home the top spot for the women. Haller and Anderson each earned themselves NZ$6,000 and 850 Swatch TTR Ranking points, setting them up with a good result on the TTR World Tour for the 2010-11 snowboarding season.

The New Zealand Open is the second 5Star event for the men on the 2010/11 Swatch TTR World Tour season and Norway’s Gjermund Braaten was able to maintain his World No. 1 position in the TTR Rankings with a second place finish today. Haller climbed the rankings to the World No. 6 spot with his first place finish and Mikkel Bang of Norway moved up in the rankings to World No. 8.

This was Haller’s first major TTR title win of his career and got it done with a run consisting of a backside lipslide on the down-flat-down bar, tailslide on the gap to flat box, switch backside 720, Cab 900 and a frontside 720 tailgrab.

For the women, the New Zealand Open was the first major competition for the 2010/11 season, so the pressure was on for riders to get a good result at this early season event. Anderson powered through the fog and rain to claim the top spot, which bumped her into the World No. 1 position. Anderson won the women’s competition with a boardslide-to-tailpress on the down bar, a frontside 180 out on the up box, switch backside 180 mute, backside 360 mute, and a backside 180 mute. Local New Zealander, Shelly Gotlieb, had a good day and finished in second place while Kjersti Ostgaard Buaas of Norway rounded out the podium in third place.

With their podium finishes today, Gotlieb moved into the World No. 5 spot and Buaas is now sitting in the World No. 2 position in the Swatch TTR World Rankings.

The New Zealand Open used the new Snowboard Live Scoring (SLS) judging system for slopestyle finals and will also use the system for tomorrow’s halfpipe semi-finals and finals.