Slopestyle season launch set for Stubai with finals on Friday
Nov 23, 2023·Freeski Park & Pipe
The FIS Freeski World Cup season is set to restart in a big way this week in Austria, where the first slopestyle World Cup of the winter will take to the world famous Stubai Zoo for the seventh time, with action slated to go down from Thursday to Friday, 23-24 November.
With some inclement weather in the forecast for Friday and Saturday up on the Stubai glacier the situation is a bit of a fluid one at the moment, and officials and organisers have already made the decision to move qualifications from their scheduled Friday time slot up to Thursday where it’s looking like there’s a promising window for competition.
From there we’ll keep our eyes on the forecast, likely aiming for a Friday finals while keeping open the possibility to push that back to the originally planned Saturday start time should Friday prove to be too snowy, windy, foggy, or all of the above.
As it stands right now, the finals will go down on Friday tomorrow, starting at 09:30am CET followed by the men at 09:48am CET. The same panel of six judges will judge both men’s heat one and men’s heat two, while the women’s qualifications will be judged by a separate panel.
Just about everybody who’s anybody on the freeski competition circuit is on hand here in Stubai and hoping that the weather provides a chance to show their best. However, with last year’s Stubai women’s winner and 2022/23 double crystal globe winner Johanne Killi (NOR) announcing her retirement from competition a couple months ago, it’ll be up to one of the other rippers on hand to step up and throw down to take the Stubai win for this season.
Likely to be leading the charge should be Tess Ledeux (FRA), who won here in Stubai back in 2020, had a rough go of it in 2021 with a 27th place finish, and then wasn’t on hand for last year’s competition. Look for the 21 year old to be gunning hard to return to the top of the podium this week.
Reigning slopestyle Olympic gold medallist Mathilde Gremaud (SUI), X Games bronze medallist Kirsty Muir (GBR), last year’s Stubai third-place finisher Grace Henderson (USA), PyeongChang 2018 Olympic gold medallist Sarah Hoefflin (SUI) and style master Olivia Asselin (CAN) are a few of the other contenders on the women’s side.
For the men there’s a good chance we’ll once again be looking forward to a showdown between the World Cup’s duelling GOATS, as Birk Ruud (NOR) and Andri Ragettli (SUI) have owned Stubai for the past three seasons.
Ragettli took the W in Stubai back in 2020, but since then Ruud has gone back-to-back here with wins in both of the past two season. However, last season Ragettli was right behind his Norwegian counterpart in second place, and with three super technical rail sections one after the other to close out the Schneestern-designed Stubai course, we expect to see two of the world’s finest rail technicians in a tight battle once again this week.
There are plenty of other big dawgs out there to challenge Ruud and Ragettli, however, with reigning Olympic slopestyle champ Alex Hall and 2023 X Games silver medallist Mac Forehand of the U.S. squad leading the way.
Throw in a stacked Canadian team featuring Max Moffatt and Evan McEachran, Beijing 2022 Olympic bronze medallist Jesper Tjader (SWE) and Oliwer Magnusson of the Swedish team, Ruud’s strong supporting cast on the Norwegian team such as Sebastian Schjerve and Ulrik Samnoey, and the host Austrians with Matej Svancer and Lukas Muellauer, and the men’s start list is looking very heavy, indeed.
While it’s going to be a bit wait-and-see when it comes to the weather after Thursday’s qualifications, you can count on another entertaining start to the slopestyle World Cup season, if the weather cooperates and the competition does indeed go down. Stay tuned to our social media channels for updates through the coming days.
QUICK LINKS
FIS.tv finals livestream
Stubai data page (start lists, livescoring, results)
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