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SFR Freestyle World Cup 2015 Tignes Concludes

Canada dominates a highly competitive field

featured in Events reviews Author Daniel Wishaw, Tignes Reporter Updated

Well that’s it for another year! The SFR Freestyle tour event in Tignes' legendary superpipe has been run and won, with Canada taking home both Crystal Globes for the Men’s and Women’s editions of this years competition.

Elimination qualifiers were held on Wednesday and Thursday morning for the men and women respectively; with the field whittled down to eight male and six female riders for the concluding final under the clear skies and bright lights of Tignes superpipe.

Japan’s Ayana Onozuka qualified through in top spot for the women with a score of 87.40 followed by Janina Kuzma (NZL) and local favourite Marie Martinod (FRA). While on the men’s side of the draw the qualifiers were dominated by North American and French competitors, with Gus Kenworth (USA) leading with a score of 91.00 followed by reigning Olympic champion David Wise (USA) and Mike Riddle (CAN) in third. France managed to qualify three athletes into the final eight and X Games Aspen winner Simon d’Artois (CAN) also made the cut.

While the preceding few days had bought very warm spring like conditions to Tignes, Thursday night turned out to be slightly cooler allowing for a solid pipe and presenting perfect conditions for the competitors. The stage was all set for the world’s best freestyle halfpipe skiers to throw down some highly technical runs and impress the strong crowd that had gathered in Val Claret.

For the final event each competitor was allowed three runs at the pipe, with women’s highest qualifier Ayana Onozuka setting the bar high in the first round with 90.40 run which set her up as the athlete to beat. The second run saw Cassie Sharpe (CAN) beat that benchmark with a 91.80 run while Onozuka failed to improve her score, faltering and only brining in a 68.80, with all other athletes posting in the low to mid 80’s. The final run for the women saw Onozuka again fail to beat her first score, while Cassie Sharp upped her second run with a score of 93.80 to take home top prize.

On the men’s side Olympic champion David Wise set the benchmark with his first score of 92.00 followed by Alex Ferreira (USA) on 87.40. Round two for the men saw Wise up the leading score to 93.60, putting clear daylight between himself and his other competitors as the next best score for that run fell almost nine points lower. Round three saw Wise again up his score to 94.20 with a superbly clean and technical run, but found himself coming up short of the 95.00 just set by Mike Riddle (CAN) who took home the Men’s Crystal globe this year along with a healthy prize purse and points for the world tour.

With Canada taking home both top prizes it was further validation for their excellent freestyle development program and a show of perhaps what we can expect from this North American country for the up coming years.

As the Tignes contest was the final for the freestyle world cup for the year, the overall prizes were handed out to David Wise (USA) and Ayana Onozuka (JPN).