It wasn’t an ideal end to the much-hyped 2024/25 FIS Snowboard Park & Pipe season opener on Monday at New Zealand’s Cardrona Alpine Resort, as a string of bad weather days finally resulted in the cancellation of finals at the Winter Games NZ slopestyle World Cup and the reversion to qualification results as the final results for the competition.
With sustained windy conditions experienced throughout much of the week, followed by an overnight storm on Sunday that forced the closure of Cardrona chairlifts for Monday and the ultimate cancellation of finals, it took a huge effort by the Cardrona and Winter Games NZ crews to make full use of Friday’s favourable weather window in order to complete the full qualification slate – a huge achievement unto itself.
With quali results standing as the final results in Cardrona, it was last season’s double crystal globe winner Kokomo Murase of Japan walking away with the women’s victory after putting down a score of 78.10 in her second qualification run on Saturday.
Second place for the women went to 17-year-old reigning slopestyle World Champion Mia Brookes of Great Britain with a score of 71.65, while third place belonged to the USA’s Rebecca Flynn, who dropped in on just the fifth competition of her World Cup career and walked away with a score of 57.58 for her first World Cup podium.
For the men, it would be Canada’s Cameron Spalding taking the first win of his World Cup career with a standout first run and a score of 82.50 in the men’s qualification session.
FIS Park & Pipe World Cup action at the Winter Games NZ continues this week with freeski halfpipe competition going down from 07-08 September. For our next FIS Snowboard World Cup action, meanwhile, we look ahead to the Big Air Chur in Switzerland, taking place on 19 October, 2024.
