Canadian Darcy Sharpe Wins the 5th Annual Burton Rail Days in Tokyo – Wrap Up

Your 2015 podium, 1st Darcy Sharpe, 2nd Alex Andrews, 3rd Zach Aller Image:: Alex Horvath

Transfer | Alex Horvath

Street snowboarding has come a long way in the last 20 or so years. From its early origins that drew influence from skateboarding, the act of hitting handrails in snow-covered streets has now evolved to become an arena-based spectacle carried on with the full swathe of competitive regulation including cameras, live-streams, judges, stage lighting and huge crowds of screaming fans. Of course this was a natural evolution, and I’m sure that even the most core street-only snowboarders would admit that the allure of these events is irresistible.

Despite driving rain and mild conditions that felt far removed from a Japanese winter, the fans turned up in their thousands, quickly packing out the Roppongi Hills Arena ready for a huge night of urban snowboarding competition.

Over 6,000 spectators filled the stands and went wild for the riders Image:: Alex Horvath

The Burton Rail Days set-up is unlike any other, set within the gigantic Roppongi Hills civic complex in the beating heart of Tokyo’s CBD, the rails are built upon a behemoth structure that requires a team of over 200 scaffolders to erect in just a few days. Well-known park builders Snow Park Technologies then took care of the rest of the set-up, by installing a highly technical, yet crowd-pleasing course that included a close-out or flat bar option, a down bar, pole-jam on the top half that led straight into a wall-ride, followed by a choice of rainbow rail and creeper box. The lines on offer through the course were endless, with multiple transfer options that made sure riders took full advantage of all the features.

This year, the event attracted a field of 17 riders representing six different countries, including Australia’s own Luke Staveley who qualified for the event by winning the Mini Stand-out award at the 2015 Burton Cattleman’s event in Mt Buller. Luke competed against some of the heaviest names in snowboarding, including Sebastian Toutant, Zak Hale, Johnny O’Connor, Ethan Deiss and Japan’s home-crowd heroes Yuma Abe, Ryusei Takahashi and Yuki Kadano.

Luke Staveley, the sixteen-year-old Mt Buller local made the trip over after qualifying at the 2015 Burton Cattleman’s Rail Jam Image:: Alex Horvath

With a daunting task ahead of him, the sixteen-year-old from Melbourne fought hard through a stacked first heat – that included event winners Darcy Sharpe and Alex Andrews – to try and earn one of six coveted spots in the final heat. Despite almost landing a crowd-favourite nollie frontflip off the wall ride, he couldn’t quite match the flowing technicality of the heat’s top three and Luke’s Rail Jam journey ended there. After the conclusion of the second heat, the six-rider final was noticeably missing some street-snowboarding heavyweights such as Johnny O’Connor, Zak Hale, Ethan Deiss and Jesse Augustinius. After putting on such a stand-out performance alongside experienced riders many years his senior, Luke walked away from this event with valuable experience and a fire in his belly that will serve him well in years to come.

Queue the six-rider final and the riders came out swinging in front of the cheering crowd with a huge display of linked tricks down the flowy course as they put their strongest runs together for the judges. In the end, Darcy Sharpe (CAN) clinched the win and took home a cool $15,000 for his troubles. His final runs included a frontside boardslide 450 out, ally-oop wallride to lipslide 270 on the rainbow rail, as well as an impressive half Cab 50-50 transfer to lipslide 270. In second was Alex Andrews (USA) whose run highlights included a backside 270 lipslide, a 50-50 to frontboard transfer to fakie, and a boardslide 270 on the rainbow rail.

3rd place getter Zach Aller locks into a backside bluntslide on the bottom rainbow rail Image:: Alex Horvath

Last year’s Burton Rail Days winner Zach Aller (CAN) came back strong this year and took third place with tech tricks including a frontboard to boardslide transfer 270 out and a front blunt 270 transfer to 50-50. Finally, the Canadians swept the three best trick categories—Sebastien Toutant (CAN) took Best Air for his boardslide rodeo off the cannon rail, Zach Aller (CAN) took Best Wallride with a massive frontside invert and Best Rail went to Darcy Sharpe (CAN) with a backside tailslide indy.

What a way to kick off the season for Darcy Sharpe, who had this to say about his hard fought win, “I was just snowboarding pretty much, doing the best I could…that’s about all that was going through my mind.”

Japanese shredder Rio Takahashi winds up through the top flat bar Image:: Alex Horvath

For a recap of all the action from the weekend, check out the Burton Rail Days event highlights video here. And for Instagram-ready versions of highlights from the top 3 finishers, follow these links: Darcy Sharpe, Alex Andrews, and Zach Aller and be sure to tag them #BurtonRailDays.

This image hardly needs a caption, the local crowd were wild! Image:: Alex Horvath

The energy in the room as the winners were announced was electric. Image:: Alex Horvath

While Ethan Deiss never made it to the final six, he was clearly a crowd favourite. Image:: Alex Horvath

“Darcy san, Selfie! Selfie!” After this, Darcy Sharpe turned to me and said, “Pre-game, bro!” Image:: Alex Horvath