Halfpipe World Cup season finale set for Calgary Snow Rodeo
Feb 09, 2023·Snowboard Park & Pipe
The 2022/23 FIS Snowboard halfpipe World Cup season is set to come to a close this Friday at the Calgary Snow Rodeo, where the world’s best will square off one more time to see who walks away with this winter’s halfpipe crystal globes.
The Calgary Snow Rodeo is the penultimate event in this season’s Shred the North series of Canadian competitions, as Canada looks to become the only nation in World Cup history to host five of the six main FIS Snowboard World Cup events in one season.
With big air and parallel giant slalom World Cups already in the books, halfpipe and slopestyle going down this weekend in Calgary, and snowboard cross set to take to the slopes of Mount Saint Anne from March 24-26, Canada will see more FIS Snowboard World Cup action in one season than any nation has before, and this weekend’s Snow Rodeo should be a standout.
Halfpipe qualifications in Calgary are slated for Thursday, 9 February, beginning with the women at 10:10 and followed by the men at 11:40. Snow Rodeo halfpipe finals will then be taking to the superpipe at Calgary’s Canada Olympic Park at 19:00 on Friday, 10 February.
ONO ALL BUT CERTAIN OF FIRST CAREER CRYSTAL GLOBE
On the women’s side of things Japan’s Mitsuki Ono comes into the final event of the season with a commanding lead on halfpipe standings after back-to-back victories - first at the Laax Open in Switzerland in January, and then this past weekend at the Toyota U.S. Grand Prix at Mammoth Mountain.
Those were the first two World Cup victories of Ono’s career, and the 18-year-old looks primed for many more as she continues to add new tricks to her run and boost them at an amplitude that few can match from top to bottom of the pipe.
Ono also has a third-place result from the halfpipe season-opener in Copper Mountain (USA), giving her 260 points for a 81-point lead on her next closest competitor, Queralt Castellet of Spain, meaning that the Japanese rider needs only 20 points to lock down the 2022/23 women’s halfpipe crystal globe title. Which is to say that, with only 11 women on the start list for the competition here in Calgary, Ono could do nothing more than drop in on qualies, earn the 24 points granted for a 11th place finish, and walk away with her first World Cup halfpipe title.
Somehow, the 33-year-old Castellet does not have a crystal globe win in her 18-year World Cup career, and obviously that trend is set to continue this season. However, with her Beijing 2022 Olympic Winter Games silver medal win last season, and a victory at Copper Mountain in December, Castellet has proven that she remains amongst the halfpipe. Castellet will be looking for a repeat of her 2018/19 victory here in Calgary this week.
Third overall for the women is the US’s Maddie Mastro with 165 points, and the 22-year-old is just one more strong performance away from locking down the first top-3 overall finish of her World Cup career.
Mastro has finished third in each of the three halfpipe World Cups to take place so far this season, but she’s still on the hunt for her first World Cup win. Her previous best finish in Calgary is a fourth-place from 2019/20 season.
Mastro will have to hold off Canada’s own Elizabeth Hosking if she’s to maintain her top-3 status come end of competition time on Friday night, and with the 21-year-old Hosking just eight points back of Mastro with 157 points, this may be the most compelling duel of the women’s event here in Calgary.
Hoskings’ Canadian teammate Brooke D’hondt and Berenice Wicki of Switzerland are a couple of the other names to watch out for on the women’s Calgary halfpipe competition.
HIRANO, JAMES AND GUSELI IN BATTLE ROYALE FOR MEN’S HALFPIPE TITLE
Over on the men’s side we’ve got a real barnburner shaping up, with all of the World Cup top five riders on hand here in Calgary and within reach of the globe.
Atop the men’s halfpipe standings is Japan’s Ruka Hirano with 214 points. Hirano snatched the yellow World Cup leader’s bib from the great Scotty James (AUS) with a win last weekend in Mammoth after also earning top spot in Laax a couple weeks before that, and with his first back-to-back World Cup win streak the 20-year-old is just one more strong result away from earning his first crystal globe.
However, immediately behind Hirano on the standings remains Mr. James, and the 28-year-old Australian superstar casts a long shadow indeed.
James has only missed the podium twice since the start of the 2017/18 World Cup season, with six victories and four runner-up finishes out of the ten podiums earned over that period. While James did finish second behind Hirano in Laax, the results there were taken from the qualification scores after finals were cancelled due to the weather. There’s no doubt that James would have upped his run for finals had they gone off in Laax, and there is some reasonable doubt as to whether Hirano would have been able to match James’ best in those finals.
With that being said, James has put himself in a difficult position in his quest for a what would be a men’s record-setting fourth career halfpipe crystal globe by not dropping in on the Mammoth World Cup this past weekend.
With 180 points, James sits 34 back of Hirano, and while there are a number of scenarios that could play out by the end of competition on Friday, the most linear path for James to earn the globe would be a victory for himself and third-place finish - or worse - for Hirano, making for a spread of 40 points between the two riders and another trophy for his already overflowing shelves.
The wildcard on the men’s side of things is another Australian, Valentino Guseli.
Guseli has been a leading figure in every storyline of the men’s Park & Pipe World Cup in 2022/23. He earned his first World Cup victory at the Style Experience big air World Cup in Edmonton back in December, before claiming the big air crystal globe at Kreischberg in early January - making him the first Australian winner and, at 17-years-old, the youngest men’s big air crystal globe winner ever.
Last weekend Guseli made some more history, finishing in second place in both the halfpipe and slopestyle competitions at Mammoth to become the first rider in World Cup history to earn a podium in all three Park & Pipe events in a single season, and just the fifth rider ever to complete the podium hat trick in the career.
Needless to say, Guseli has a virtually unassailable lead atop the Park & Pipe overall standings, and he’s also in the hunt for both the halfpipe and the slopestyle crystal globes as well.
With 166 halfpipe points Guseli is only 14 back of James, and 50 behind Hirano. While a whole lot of circumstances would have to turn his way for the halfpipe globe to end up in Guseli’s hands, stranger things have happened in the final event of a World Cup season.
Behind Guseli are the longshots, with Yuto Totsuka (JPN) and Chaeun Lead (KOR) locked at 127 points. While both are mathematically in the race, neither has a real likelihood of earning the globe. However, one or the other could find their way into the final rankings’ top three with a little luck come Friday.
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