Snow, Sport, Spirit

Snowboard pros from all over the world come to the Prestige World Cup.
MIA. from Berlin is main act at the LAAX OPEN Festival

The LAAX OPEN 2020, Europe's most renowned snowboard event, will take place from 13 to 18 January 2020. A whole week on the mountain around the Crap Sogn Gion and its mountain station GALAAXY will be all about snowboarding and freestyle. World champions, Olympic champions, newcomers and fans will mix on the ride down to the valley, where freestyle will be celebrated together in a festival mood in the rocksresort, even off-piste. The final highlight is the open air concert of MIA. at the rocksresort and a first-class DJ line-up at the Riders Club.

The World Snowboarding Event is endowed with 200.000 Swiss Francs in the disciplines slopestyle and halfpipe. A victory in LAAX at an OPEN event is much more than just getting the biggest slice of the prize money cake. It is an honour and a goal for every rider to enter the Hall of Fame. The names of the winners are a testimony to the fact that Freestyle Snowboarding and its movements are a part of the sport. Several times at the top of the podium were Kelly Clark, Chloe Kim, Natasza Zurek, Jamie Anderson, Arielle Gold, Enni Rukajärvi in the ladies' category, Peetu Piiroinen, Iouri Podladtchikov, Ayumu Hirano, Kevin Pearce in the men's category. They are joined by riders who once climbed the OPEN Olympus at Crap Sogn Gion, such as Isabel Derungs, Liu Jiayu, Doriane Vidal, Silje Norendal, Danny Davis, Andy Finch, Chris Sörman, Shaun White, Roope Tonteri, Stale Sandbech, Mark McMorris, Max Parrot, Scotty James and a few more.

Since time immemorial - and not just since the OPEN Events from 2005 - a victory in LAAX has been a high Prestige among riders. Be it with José Fernandes, the first European snowboard pro, in the 80s, Reto Lamm in the early 90s or Gian Simmen and Nicola Thost, the first snowboard halfpipe Olympic champion ever, in the later 90s, Xavier Delerue in the Boardercross weddings around 2000 and Nicolas Müller in the first millennium years, today idol of many snowboarders. Everyone was keen on the LAAX title! And the snowboard events in LAAX have always been a cultural event. That means sport, language, design, music, media, film, - they express an open attitude to life, a Lifestyle.

The main attraction is and remains snowboarding, freestyle. The practice of the sport itself. The tricks and flights, the airs and corks, performed by professionals as well as from the other star, are cheered by the crowd and judged by the judges. But at least one powder day has to be there for all participating riders, that is tradition. Just like the descent into the valley via the P60, a freestyle slope with more than 50 elements for jibbing and tricks.

Once you arrive downstairs, you will continue to experience and learn: in the Piazza Cafedeli, in the Freestyle Academy, in the steam bath of the rocksresort apartment, in the gym and during yoga in the Riders Hotel. In the rocksresort village with food stalls, shop talk in a relaxed atmosphere, chill out in a deck chair with a hip DJ sound, movies on the video wall. Finally, the outdoor supporting programme in the valley culminates in the open air live concert by MIA, the classic among the electropop combos, on Saturday, 18.01.2020, at 9 pm. Suitably after the halfpipe final night finale, which at 6 p.m. under floodlight at Crap Sogn Gion will be the galactic sporting highlight.