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No Kidding, They're Gonna Build This Giant Snow Ramp Right Near The Sydney Opera House

Oooooh.
This was the ramp at AIR + STYLE in L.A. in February, 2017. Look out, Sydney.
Getty Images
This was the ramp at AIR + STYLE in L.A. in February, 2017. Look out, Sydney.

Why the heck not?

They're going to build an absolutely enormous, 16 storey snow-covered ramp in Sydney's Domain, as part of a festival planned for August 2018 called AIR + STYLE -- which will combine snowy action sports with music, culture and tech.

AIR + STYLE has been a big, successful rockin' thing in Los Angeles, Beijing and Innsbruck, Austria, for a while now. It's owned by Shaun White, the skateboarder and Olympic gold medal-winning snowboarder who is the world's best-known extreme sports athlete.

Jerod Harris via Getty Images

"We're putting it right in the heart of Sydney and I'm pretty excited about it," White told HuffPost Australia, of what he believes will be the first of many AIR + STYLE festivals in Sydney.

"The cool selfish part is I get to come down there every year. I really love Sydney. I had a birthday here at one point and drove down to Bondi Beach to celebrate. You can skate, you can surf, the people are great. It's a very similar lifestyle to Southern California where I grew up. So when I was approached to do this in Sydney, it was a no-brainer."

The event is being organised by sports marketing and promotional agency Moore Sports International, who are best known for staging the 2014 Major League Baseball Opening Series in Sydney.

"This is a truly ground breaking event for Sydney," CEO Jason Moore said. "AIR + STYLE Sydney will be the must have ticket for 2018."

Those "must have" tickets, by the way, will range from $149 to $249 for the full VIP thing. But what exactly is in store?

Yikes!
Getty Images
Yikes!

Well, you get the world's best skiers and snowboarders doing big air jumps in a competition format where best trick wins. You also get topline bands, who are yet to be announced. And you get a snow experience, with opportunities to learn to ski or snowboard in an area which is obviously not quite as imposing as the giant ramp.

Which begs the obvious question: where do they get the snow from?

White described the snow as more liked "shaved ice". So even though it'll be winter in Australia, nobody's going to drive down to Perisher and haul back truckloads of snow from the mounds beside the carpark. More likely they'll be employing new snowmaking technology which can spit out the equivalent of a convenience store ice slurpee in temperatures well above freezing.

Anyway it's exciting and it's going to happen.

This could be the most exciting event in The Domain since Carols By Candlelight.
Timothy Norris via Getty Images
This could be the most exciting event in The Domain since Carols By Candlelight.

"It's definitely a Coachella meets X Games thing," White said.

"There'll be DJ sets and then the next band will come on, and you can go see the bands or maybe see your fave riders perform on the ramp. That's the vibe."

Oh, and while we're talking winter sports, you should know that it's only 100 days this Wednesday to the Winter Olympics in PyeongChang, Korea, in which White will compete against Australian world champ Scotty James in the halfpipe event.

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