Sharpe and Irving win at Mammoth
Mar 10, 2019·Freeski Park & Pipe
The final FIS Freeski halfpipe World Cup of the 2018/19 season went down on Friday at Mammoth Mountain, where Cassie Sharpe (CAN) and Birk Irving (USA) walked away with big wins while the Canadian duo of aforementioned Sharpe and her teammate Simon d’Artois took the overall halfpipe World Cup titles.
Initially scheduled for Friday, the halfpipe competition had been moved to Saturday following a long series of weather and scheduling-related problems. And while Saturday brought a major improvement in weather conditions, unfortunately the bluebird skies didn’t hold for long, with dense clouds and wind gusts coming into play as soon as the first riders started dropping in for their training runs.
And while conditions were far from perfect on the day, a huge amount of work put in by the local organisers and the Mammoth Mountain Resort crew made running the competition possible. At the end of the day all that enormous effort paid off big time, as the world’s best athletes yet once again put on a spectacular show to cap off a highly entertaining FIS Freeski halfpipe World Cup season.
In the ladies competition Cassie Sharpe came with a spectacular victory for her second World Cup win of the season and most importantly her second consecutive halfpipe World Cup crystal globe.
Once again it was a tight battle for the victory between Sharpe and her biggest competitor this season Kelly Sildaru (EST). And in fact it was the 17-year-old ripper from Estonia, who was leading the field with a score of 87.40 points after run one.
But Sharpe stepped her game up in the second run, stomping arguably the best halfpipe run we’ve ever seen by a female skier, including back-to-back 900s as well as both left and right 1080s. And while Sharpe also maintained a huge amplitude and flawless execution, the judges did not hesitate to put her right in the first place with the final score of 95.60 points.
“The weather was a little bit tough to deal with, but everyone pushed through that,” said Sharpe, “Going into my second run, I knew I was not in the top spot whatever what I did so I just went out and dropped my new trick I’ve only done twice before. I’m just super happy.”
Sildaru had to settle for the second place on the day with her first run score of 87.40 points, while Zhang Kexin (CHN) rounded out the ladies’ podium in third with 82.20 points.
In the overall standing it was Sharpe who reached for her second halfpipe World Cup title with her win on Saturday. The 26-year-old skier captured the crystal globe in the same fashion as in the previous year, coming in hot with a clutch performance at the final stop of the season.
“I like to put myself under pressure,” said Sharpe, ”It stresses me out, but it’s so fun. I came into this not expecting to get the globe, but I didn’t want to get my hopes up about it. If it happened then yeah, but if it didn’t, I did not want to be upset about it.”
Finishing the season just behind Sharpe in second was her Canadian teammate Rachael Karker, while Zhang completed the ladies’ podium in third.
Moving over to the men’s side of the event Birk Irving went for his very first World Cup podium, while taking a huge victory on home turf with a score of 95.20 points for his second run including a switch left dub 1080, right 900, left 1080, switch 720 and a massive left dub 1260 to finish things off.
“It’s amazing to finish off the season with my first podium and my first victory,” said Irving, “I just wanted to put my stock run on my first run. I was able to put it down and I was sitting in top-3. Then I just thought that I didn’t have that much to lose so I tried to throw some different tricks in there and it worked out perfectly.”
Second place on the day went to Simon d’Artois, who scored his second top-3 World Cup finish in 2018/19 with his 93.80 points run, while Thomas Krief (FRA) came in third with 86.60 points for his first podium of the season.
With the second place finish at Mammoth, d’Artois jumped into first place in the overall halfpipe ranking and took his career’s first World Cup title.
“I can’t believe it. It hasn’t yet hit me”, said d’Artois, “It was a tough day and I was happy to put two runs. There was obviously some tough competition out here. And Birk absolutely killed it and he deserves to be in first. But to finish second here today and to walk away with the globe is just unbelievable.”
Nico Porteous ended the season in second, after struggling to put a run down at Mammoth and finishing with a sort of disappointing 16th place in the finals, while the double Olympic Champion David Wise (USA) rounded out the 2018/19 halfpipe men’s podium in third.
The FIS Freeski World Cup action at Mammoth Mountain continues tomorrow with a full day of slopestyle competition. Qualifications are set to get underway starting from 9:45 PST, with finals scheduled for 13:15.
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