Nico Porteous (pictured) is among several Kiwis competing at the Dew Tour in Colorado. Photo / Photosport
A trio of elite New Zealand free skiers and snowboard star Zoi Sadowski-Synnott line up in one of the biggest snow sports events on the calendar at Copper Mountain in Colorado tomorrow.
The Dew Tour features the cream of the crop of snow sports athletes in an invite only event, with qualifying underway from 6.30am on Thursday in the men's free ski halfpipe.
World champion Nico Porteous, his brother Miguel and Ben Harrington line up in a 24-strong field with 10 qualifying for the final, before world champion Sadowski-Synnott kicks off her season with the women's slopestyle snowboard qualifying.
Nico Porteous is coming off a strong second place finish at last week's World Cup halfpipe opener at Dreamboat Colorado, but his coach Tommy Pyatt warns the Olympic bronze medallist will have his work cut out just to qualify for the weekend's finals.
"One of Nico's weaknesses would be skiing in adverse weather. So he's really strong in those sunny days," Pyatt said. "It looks like the detour qualifiers is another snowy windy day. We're putting in some work right now to see what we can do to better him on those worse weather days.
"Obviously we're swapping goggles every lap so they're not fogging. But the main thing is the halfpipe gets slower so it's harder to get the amplitude to do the big tricks. We're just training some techniques for him, skiing backwards particularly as he's not so fast backwards, and he has to ski faster backwards to get the amplitude he needs."
Nico Porteous's brother Miguel has recovered sufficiently from an MCL injury and is expected to perform strongly as he further presses his Olympic credentials having qualified for a quota spot last week.
"Miguel is feeling pretty happy on his knees. There's still some slight pain but he's doing a few more tricks so we got high hopes for him to be performing a little stronger at this event," Pyatt said.
Ben Harrington is the least experienced of the men's halfpipe trio at Copper Mountain and is competing at his first Dew Tour, which Pyatt says it up there with the X Games in terms of its prestige.
"He's really hyped and has got his younger brother Luca here to help coach him. So they have a bit of a family trip going on. He's stoked to be here but obviously still training as hard as he can to do as well as he can."
Sadowski-Synnott will be the last to go of the Kiwi contingent in slopestyle qualifying, her first competition in more than eight months.
"Yeah, I'm frothing," Sadowski-Synnott said. "I haven't competed since last March so it's a good way to kick off the season in Colorado.
"It's an invite only field of 16 women snowboarders and only eight go through to the finals. It's the first event of the season and I have a few goals in mind but really to make the finals and go from there. Its super fun being back in the mix and competing again and doing practice and I'm just frothing to get back out there."
The adverse weather conditions that are expected could see delays to the start time and may prevent Sadowski-Synnott from unleashing any new tricks, but experience has shown her to be prepared for anything.
"Colorado gets pretty cold. I don't think it's meant to get too cold this week, but always dressing warm helps and I usually pack four different coloured lenses for the goggles in case the light is different because when the clouds come in and it gets a bit murky, you can't really differentiate the snow from the sky and that's kind of scary."
Finn Bilous is the other New Zealand free skier at Copper Mountain, but he is first alternate for the men's slopestyle qualifying on Friday and will need a late withdrawal to make the start line.
The men's free ski halfpipe and women's snowboarding slopestyle finals are on Sunday.