Brown Bear’s mission is it to always keep you on track with what’s happening in the New Zealand snow world, so here’s another update.

Yesterday Snow Park NZ was the centre of attention as just under 70 snowboarders competed in the Snowboard Parallel Giant Slalom at the 2010 Junior World Championships. With driving blizzards, high winds and limited visibility the weather at Snow Park NZ was challenging but couldn’t stop the junior snowboarders from all over the world. Annamari Chundak (20) from the Ukraine and Edwin Coratti (19) from Italy topped the podium, taking out the World Championship titles.

Annamari Chundak says: “The weather was horrible but we train in all different conditions so it didn’t affect me so much. It was a very tough competition but I believed in myself and now I am so happy to be world champion.”

Julie Zogg from Switzerland and Ina Meschik from Austria came second and third in the women’s race, and Konstantin Shiplove from Russia and Stefan Baumeister from Germany took out silver and bronze in the men’s section.

Today, the finals for the Snowboard Parallel Slalom will kick off at 12pm.