The Toyota Big air is one of the added spectacles to the Sapporo International Ice Carving Festival. The city center of Sapporo is filled with massive piles of snow that are carved into the most intricate ice sculptures creating an artificial winter wonderland. The Toyota Big air is located a short ways out side of the city center in an old Olympic stadium. Like the ice sculptors the Toyota big air jump is an equally impressive man made work of art. This year the scaffolding stadium jump of the Toyota Big Air was given its first major face lift in years. The jump was increased in size to try to grow to accommodate the level of today's riding.

The riders woke up to blue skies which is not the norm for the usually snowy Toyota Big Air. As the riders boarded the bus to the stadium all the talk was of the Vail Session which everyone had been watching on the live web cast due to the time change. Everyone seemed stoked with the sunny skies and motivated to put on a show.

The show started at dusk and sixteen riders got two runs on the new jump to make it to the head to head knock out round of eight. In true Japan style the stadium filled with thousands of screaming fans and it was quickly apparent that the fireworks budgets was stepped up in equal amounts to the increased size of the jump. Kevin Pearce the defending Toyota Big Air Champion moved into the round of eight with a stylish cab 9 bs grab where he was joined by his Burton teammates. Nicolas Müller got in with a switch bs 7 and Toyota Big Air rookies Mikkel Bang with a cab 9 and Mason Aguirre with a fs 9. Ironically none of the teammates would go head to head with each other in the round of eight. A sharp contrast to Kevin facing Danny Davis and Nicolas Müller on the his way to the win last year.

In the round of eight Kevin moved on to the next round with a cab 9 against Iouri Padladtchikov who survived one of the worst crashes of the night and maybe Toyota Big Air history. Iouri slipped out before the take off and launched to the knuckle on his back but fortunately was not seriously hurt. Nicolas Müller had a sick switch bs 9 but was taken by an Antti Autti fs 1080. Mikkel Bang's cab 9 was beaten by Masatake Yamamoto's cab 9 as Mikkel uncharacteristically was not able to hold his grab the entire rotation.Mason Aguirre was not able to get the landing on his fs 1080, letting Risto Mattila advance.

In the round of four. Antti's fs 1080 took Kevin's fs 1080 because of a slight hand drag and Risto took Masatake with a switch bs 9 over a cab 9. In the last round Antti took the win with a fs 1080 over Risto who was unable to land two switch bs 1080 attempts.

Results:

1- Antti Autti Finland Flow
2- Risto Mattila Finland Flow
3- Masatake Yamamoto Japan Rice28
4- Kevin Pearce USA Burton
5- Nicolas Muller Switzerland Burton
6- Mikkel Bang Norway Burton
7- Mason Aguirre USA Burton
8- Iouri Podladtchikov Switzerland Santa Cruz
9- Akifumi Hiraoka Japan Ride
10- Takumi Suzuki Japan Burton
11- Fredrik Evensen Norway Head
12- Cvb Arai Japan Yonex/Fc
13- David Benedek Germany Salomon
14- Shuji Ito Japan Btm
15- Eero Ettala Finland Nitro
16- Shota Suzuki Japan Burton

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