A 13-year-old from Wanaka has landed on the podium at the prestigious Burton US Open Snowboarding Championships at Vail Mountain, USA.

Better known as the Burton Open, the event is snowboarding’s longest running pre-eminent competition, featuring the best snowboarders in the world competing over the course of the week.

The intense competition didn’t stop young Wanaka competitor Campbell Melville Ives from claiming a bronze medal in the Burton Open’s Junior Jam event.

The field featured 25 of the top boy and girl grommets aged 14 and under competing in a reimagined halfpipe. The competitors relied on creativity, style, and skill as they dropped into the new modified pipe venue - a 13-foot enhanced minipipe transitioning into a standard 22-foot superpipe - in a best-of-two-runs format. 

Fynn Bullock-Womble (US) put down the top two scores of the competition earning a 90.80 on his first run to take the lead, and followed that up with a 95.40 on his second run. Jonas Hasler (SUI) earned a score of 78.60 impressing the crowd with a combination of old-school moves up top including an Andrecht plant and back-to-back 900s in the superpipe.

Campbell took a very close third with a score of 76.00.

Campbell and his identical twin brother Fin have been on the slopes since they were three-years-old, taught by parents Karen and Neil, who are both snowboarders.

The young duo are regulars on the event circuit, but competition between them is kept in check by the fact they compete in different sports: Fin is a freeskier and Cam is a snowboarder.

Competition at the Burton Open continues tomorrow Wednesday, February 26th with the men’s and women’s slopestyle semi-finals on Vail’s Golden Peak. Wanaka’s Zoi Sadowski-Synnott and Carlos Garcia Knight will be competing.

PHOTO: Supplied