Featured image credit: Supplied by Canada Snowboard
Edmonton Elks’ home arena has become the first Canadian stadium to be transformed into a championship winter sports venue ahead of December’s Canada Snowboard’s Style Experience FIS Big Air World Cup.
The football team’s 56,000-capacity Commonwealth Stadium has been fitted out with a huge snowboard jump structure on scaffolding ahead of the event, which runs from December 9-10. The Style Experience will be Canada’s first-ever large stadium Big Air World Cup competition, and the event will the first of seven World Cup competitions to take place in Canada during the 2022-23 season.
The event is part of the FIS World Cup Tour and Shred the North Series, and will act as a qualification event for the Milano Cortina 2026 Olympic Games. It will also feature a fanzone, live music, art, freestyle snowmobile demonstrations and other sporting competitions.
Victor Cui, Edmonton Elks’ president, showed images of the venue’s transformation project on LinkedIn, adding: “How insanely unreasonable does it sound if you heard the idea “let’s turn our football field into a massive snow jump in the winter”? YUP.”
Amarjeet Sohi, Edmonton’s Mayor, said: “Edmonton is delighted to host this exciting new event at Commonwealth Stadium in December. Edmonton has a rich history of hosting world-class events, and this will be no exception. We look forward to showcasing Commonwealth Stadium – and our ability to think differently – by bringing snowboarding into an urban environment. Our city is a place of year-round action, and events such as this are important to showcase Edmonton as a vibrant place to live and play.”
Boston’s Fenway Park and Atlanta’s SunTrust Park are among the US venues to have staged FIS Big Air World Cup events.
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