The Asian Open 2009 Snowboarding Championships will be held at ALTS Bandai resort in Fukushima from Feb. 24 ~ March 1, 2009 and is Asia’s largest snowboarding event. Continuing the 15 year tradition for excellence established by the Nippon Open, the Asian Open is excited to celebrate its first anniversary and looks forward to expanding competitive snowboarding throughout Asia .

The Asian Open is part of the Burton Global Open Series (BGOS). The BGOS spans 6 countries from New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Switzerland, Japan and USA and is open to all snowboarders, whether amateur or professional. At each BGOS event, riders have the opportunity to earn valuable points based on their halfpipe and slopestyle results. At the end of the season, the top male and female BGOS champion will each win USD$100,000, currently the largest single payout in competitive snowboarding.

Each year, more and more snowboarders from Japan are making their way to the top and pose a serious challenge to rider’s coming from outside of the region.. Kazu Kokubo from Japan barely missed the BGOS champion title in 2008; Takaharu Nakai is Japan’s leading rider; Ryo Aono took 2nd at the X-GAMES; and Soko Yamaoka, one of Japan’s top female riders; will all shoot for the top of the podium. And be sure to watch for riders from other parts of Asian that are exploding onto the snowboard scene, including Korea with its huge snowboard boom and China and its national team riders.

The Burton Global Open Series is part of the Swatch Ticket To Ride (TTR) World Snowboard Tour, the largest group of independent freestyle snowboard events in the world. The Asian Open is a 5Star TTR event. The Asian Open finals will be webcast live throughout the world on Go211.com. Go211.com is BGOS’s official webcaster to provide rider’s score, ranking, profile and more details live. Don’t miss all the Asian Open finals action LIVE on Go211.com.

Be a part of history, don’t miss the crowning of the first Asian Open champion!