Campbell Melville Ives Photo: Simon Bruty for OIS/IOC
New Zealand's Campbell Melville Ives has signed on for the inaugural season of snowboarding legend Shaun White's latest venture which aims to improve the life of the next generation of snow sports athletes.
The Snow League is the first professional winter sports league for snowboarders and freeskiers and it is shaking up how athletes compete and what is at stake.
A unique format of head-to-head battles on the halfpipe and significant prize money means Olympians, X Games medalists and World Cup winners are among the 24 men and 20 women opting to take part.
In its first season the tour began in Aspen this month, will head to China in December back to Aspen in February next year and ends in Switzerland the following month.
Melville Ives received a wildcard spot due to his ranking on the World Snowboard Points List.
The 18-year-old was the only New Zealander taking part in Aspen.
"Shaun White's invested a lot of money into it so it's really well done," Melville Ives said.
"It's pretty much like a major sports league something like the NFL, or Premier League, or like a more of a classic knockout series that's really entertaining for the viewer compared to the average snowboard competition."
The first event was not Melville Ives' "lucky day".
The winner of each of the four qualifying heats went straight to finals and the second and third placed riders went on to last chance qualification.
"I got the second highest score of the day with an 86 landing my probably [personal best] run but the thing was I had the Olympic champion and the world champion in my heat, so I was sitting in first place last run of the heat but the Olympic champion Ayumu Hiano drops in and does a really insane run and just beats me.
"So that meant he went to finals and I had to go to the last chance qualification.
"If I was in any other heat I would have qualified."
Melville Ives was "bummed" not to land a run in the last chance qualification.
"The pipe was difficult it was quite late in the day and it was getting a little bit softer."
While Melville Ives has to wait nine months to drop in again in The Snow League he said White had told him the plan was to expand the league to 12 events a year in the future.
The first event in Aspen was purely snowboarders but freeskiers will join from the China leg onwards. Melville Ives expected two or three New Zealand skiers would get an invite.
"My brother [twin Finley], Luke Harold and probably Benny Harrington as well those some real good skiers who are also in the halfpipe scene."
Melville Ives said he would recommend anyone who was invited took up the offer.
"The main difference between The Snow League to a normal snowboard competition is the prize money. It's quite a bit incentive for the athletes to do it.
"So instead of having to pay to do a World Cup with an entry fee, and only the top 10 get prize money, which in a normal World Cup the first place is 14,000 Swiss francs, everyone who turns up to The Snow League event gets a $5,000 US dollars and in the first place, gets $50,000.
"As Shaun White said the amount of risk that snowboarders have on themselves they don't get paid enough money to do it, compared to a sport, such as golf or tennis, or football."
US snowboarding star Shaun White. Photo: Photosport
White with three Olympic gold medals is snowboarding's most decorated Olympian, he also won 23 X Games medals, including 15 golds, during his career.
"This is something that I wish that I had when I was competing in my competitive years," the 38-year-old told CNN Sport of The Snow League.
"And I just noticed that that the entire snowboarding season and winter free ski season was just really disjointed, there was no connecting thread, just like any traditional sport you can check in and find out how your favorite team's doing or your favorite tennis players, soccer team, whatever.
"So we're not reinventing the wheel there, but it's something that the sport desperately needs. And I'm excited to be the one to usher in this new era of winter competition. It's just taking this sport to a new level and showing a professionalism that hasn't been there before."
To qualify for next year's Winter Olympics in Milano Cortina New Zealanders need to get two top 16 results in lead up events and be top 30 in the world.
"I'm eighth place in the world so I should be good for results if I don't do any events from now until the Olympics [in February] I should be qualified but going into world champs in two weeks that is the first step for the next Olympics really because it will be the highest level event I've ever attended," Melville Ives a 2024 Youth Olympian said.
He won a bronze medal at the Youth Olympics in snowboard Big Air and had fourth place finishes in slopestyle and halfpipe.
Melville Ives is currently working on adding more tricks to his runs and is encouraged by what The Snow League experience has taught him.
"The main weakness in my halfpipe riding at the moment is I'm only spinning four directions when I have five hits in the halfpipe and sometimes I miss my last hit in the halfpipe.
"So my main goal for the next week before world champs is I want to improve my riding and that I can get five hits more consistently and that will allow me to get better scores from the judges, because after talking to the judges at Snow Leagues they said if I got a fifth hit in that run, I would have beat Ayumu Hiano and went straight to finals."
The first installment of The Snow League was won by Japan's Yuto Totsuka in the men's competition and Japan's Sena Tomita in the women's competition.
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