Karl and Felicetti write history, Hofmeister clinch the PGS title in Blue Mountain

Mar 01, 2020·Alpine Snowboard

Benjamin Karl and Marko Felicetting crossing the finish line for a tie in Saturday’s PGS race in Blue Mountai © Matt Forsythe / Canada Snowboard

The first of back-to-back competitions scheduled for this weekend at Alpine Snow TKO event in Blue Mountain (CAN) went down in extraordinary fashion with Germany’s Ramona Theresia Hofmeister securing the 2019/20 PGS World Cup title, while Austria’s Benjamin Karl and Italy’s Mirko Felicetti came with a history first ever tie for top spot in a parallel World Cup event.

The FIS Snowboard Alpine World Cup was back in Canada for the first time since 2013, and the inaugural edition of the Alpine Snow TKO kicked off with style on Saturday with a full day of top-notch snowboard racing and plenty of highly contested matchups heating the atmosphere on Blue Mountain’s icy competition slope.

In the women’s event Ramona Therese Hofmeister continued to assert herself as the new alpine snowboard powerhouse by grabbing her seventh World Cup victory in 2019/20, and doing so by going through some tough heats against Xue Dong (CHN), Caroline Langenhorst (GER), Daniela Ulbling (AUT) and finally Selina Joerg (GER) in the big final.

Coming into Blue Mountain’s event, Hofmeister needed just one more solid result to seal the deal and secure her career’s first World Cup crystal globe. And she did that, while dominating yet another World Cup competition and leaving no doubt who was the fastest women on track on Saturday.

“It’s my first time in Canada and I love this place,” said Hofmeister, “After some tough training days in difficult conditions, today everything was perfect and I love the slope here. And I won today so I’m really happy about that.”

“It’s incredible, I’m so excited for another race tomorrow, and it’s the last PGS race of the season. I can’t really believe I’m the winner of the globe. It will be first one and it feels unreal.”

Selina Joerg finished the competition in second place for a 1-2 punch for the German snowboard team. It was also Joerg’s fourth top-3 finish in the 2019/20 campaign.

Daniela Ulbling rounded out the women’s podium in third place, after edging out her teammate Sabine Schoeffmann by just a 0.05 second in the small final.

History was made on the men’s side of the event as the very first tie for first place at the FIS Snowboard Alpine parallel World Cup event was awarded to Benjamin Karl and Mirko Felicetti, who wrapped up the first of back-to-back competitions in Blue Mountain with one of the most exciting big final matchup on World Cup tour we’ve seen in a long time.

After going head-to-head through the entire length of the course, Karl and Felicetti crossed the line with the exact same time. And once the photo finish images were reviewed, it was clear that Saturday’s competition would see not just one winner, but two.

“It’s amazing”, said Felicetti, “It’s my first World Cup victory and it’s the first time in history that we have two winners in parallel World Cup competitions. I’m happy for me and my team and I’m hoping for another good race tomorrow.”

“It snow the last three days and the organisers did a really good job preparing the course” said Karl,”It was bulletproof hard at the base and it was really good to ride. We had a great race today and I’m happy to be back on top of the podium."

Third place on the day went to Russia’s Andrey Sobolev, after coming victorious in the small final against Italy’s Roland Fischnaller.

The FIS Snowboard Alpine World Cup action from Blue Mountain continues on Sunday, with the second PGS race and the final PGS competition of the 2019/20 of season set to start with qualification rounds at 9:00 local time. Finals will follow up right after, starting at 13:00.

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