Freeski halfpipe World Cup preview 2024/25

Sep 04, 2024·Freeski Park & Pipe

The 2024/25 FIS Freeski World Cup season is upon us, with a fresh Olympic qualification period slated to get underway this weekend south of the equator at New Zealand’s Cardrona Alpine Resort from 06-08 September 2024.

Cardrona will be the first of five halfpipe World Cups taking place this season, spread out across five different resorts on three contents, before we wrap up the FIS Freeski season as a whole at the St. Moritz-Engadin 2025 FIS Snowboard, Freestyle and Freeski World Championships in late March.

With this marking the official start of the march towards the Milano-Cortina 2026 Olympic Winter Games, every competition from here on out takes on a little extra meaning and intensity.

THE CALENDAR

We open the 2024/25 halfpipe World Cup season at Cardrona for the sixth time in World Cup history and for the first time since the pre-pandemic 2019/20 season. Boasting one of the finest halfpipes in the southern hemisphere, a World Cup hosting tradition dating back to the 2012/13 season, a past-podium list that features some of the finest to ever do it, and the added bonus of our World Cup competition going down as part of the Winter Games NZ, Cardrona stands as an ideal venue for an early start on this season’s pipe campaign.

Following Cardrona, the pipe competition scene goes on a bit of a hiatus until early December, when we return once again to Secret Garden (CHN), the site of some of the most thrilling action of the Beijing 2022 Olympic Games.

The venue where Eileen Gu won her historic second gold medal of the Beijing 2022 Games, where Ayumu Hirano (JPN) landed a mind-blowing triple cork on his way to snowboard gold, and where Shaun White took the final runs of his GOAT competition career, Secret Garden’s pipe has proven itself over and over again to be one of the very finest in the world. It may be chilly up there in the Zhangjiakou, but the pipe runs hot, and we’re hyped for this one.

From Secret Garden we make the hop over the Pacific to Copper Mountain (USA), returning yet again to one of the most storied venues in FIS Freeski World Cup history for competition from 19-21 December.

The second-ever U.S. venue to host freeski halfpipe World Cup action back in December 2011, Copper has been an annual stop on the tour in nearly every season since then, with this winter’s iteration marking the 12th at “The Athletes’ Mountain.” Copper delivers, year in and year out, and there’s no better venue to close the book on the 2024 calendar year then there in Colorado.

Following the holiday break and some big air and slopestyle action, we return to the USA for our return to the halfpipe for what is shaping up to be the biggest week in FIS Park & Pipe World Cup history at Aspen (USA).

No resort in the 21-year history of the FIS Freeski World Cup has stepped up to host slopestyle, big air and halfpipe competitions in the same week, but this winter Aspen is taking on the challenge, and we cannot wait to see how it all goes down at one of the world’s preeminent ski resorts.

Oh, did we mention snowboard is going to be on the scene for a triple header, as well? Mark you calendars, because this one’s going to be big.

From Aspen it’s a straight line north to Calgary (CAN), where we will once again cap off the season and hand out the crystal globes at the premier pipe in the Great White North.

As with Copper, competition at Calgary’s WinSport Canada Olympic Park has become a yearly tradition, with this season marking the seventh in a row for halfpipe competition at the venue. Calgary’s pipe is the best in Canada, and with ever bigger crowds on hand every time we go back there, expect this season’s iteration to be best yet, yet again.

THE ATHLETES - WOMEN

If you thought we were going to start with any name other than Eileen Gu (CHN), you would be sorely mistaken.

The reigning Olympic halfpipe gold medallist, reigning halfpipe crystal globe winner, reigning X Games champ, co-record holder for most FIS Freeski World Cup wins of all-time, and likely the most recognised snow sports athlete on the planet, Gu is a force of nature that only ever seems to gather strength.

Last season Gu took wins in four out of five World Cup starts, with her lone blemish coming in a weather-shortened affair at Mammoth Mountain where qualification results would end up standing as final results and she finished second. Needless to say, we expect her to once again assert her dominance on tour this season - from the pipe, to the slopestyle course, and maybe even on the big air jump, too.

The lone skier to stand on the podium above Gu last season was Canada’s Amy Fraser, when the 29-year-old earned her first career World Cup win in Mammoth. That win, along with two other podiums on the season, helped power her to a second-overall finish on the halfpipe rankings last season.

With Fraser in the best form of her career and the return to competition of both Beijing bronze medallist Rachael Karker, and PyeongChang 2018 gold medallist and Beijing silver medallist Cassie Sharpe - Karker after taking a season off to focus on school, Sharpe after taking two seasons away from competition to become a mother) - the Canadian women’s team is riding high into the 2024/25 season.

Karker will be looking to pick back up a streak of 15 straight FIS podiums that includes Olympic, World Championship and World Cup starts and which dates back to the start of the 2019/20 season.

For Sharpe, meanwhile, she’ll be looking to reclaim the form that lead her to the Beijing silver medal after a difficult return from injury in the season leading up to the 2022 Games.

Also returning to action this season will be Kelly Sildaru (EST), who has missed the better part of two years of World Cup competition due to ACL surgery. In her entire FIS Freeski halfpipe career, Sildaru has only missed the podium once - a heartbreaking fourth-place finish at the Beijing Olympics - which makes her the next best sure-thing after Eileen Gu to make some noise this season.

And then there’s Zoe Atkin (GBR), third place overall on the halfpipe World Cup in 2023/24 after earning podiums in four-out-of-four World Cup starts. Also a two-time World Championships medallist, Atkin will be on the hunt for her first World Cup victory this season, and should make things complicated for the likes of Karker, Sharpe and Sildaru in their comeback seasons.

THE ATHLETES - MEN

Coming off of the most dominant campaign in the history of halfpipe skiing, the USA’s Alex Ferreira is the man that everyone else will be chasing in 2024/25.

Winning five-out-of-five World Cup events on his was\y to the halfpipe and freeski overall crystal globes, while also adding X Games and Dew Tour W’s to his resume, Ferreira swept the full competition season - a feat that no other halfpipe skier has achieved over the course of so many contests at so high a level.

While it may be seemingly impossible to keep that level of performance up over the course of yet another season, anyone who’s seen how dialled in Ferreira is the lead-up to the World Cup opener in Cardrona has a feeling that, if there’s one man who can do it, it’s him.

And if we’re talking about bright spots for the U.S. team it certainly doesn’t stop at Ferreira. With Hunter Hess coming off a breakout season that saw him finish second on the 2023/24 pipe standings behind Ferreira, Nick Goepper coming out of retirement from slopestyle and big air last season, seamlessly making the transition to World Cup pipe, and finishing fifth in last season’s rankings, Birk Irving, Aaron Blunck, and David Wise still ripping hard, and the next gen with the likes of of Dylan Ladd, Kai Morris and Cael McCarthy all getting better every day, and it’s an embarrassment of riches for the USA.

While they’re pulling from a much smaller pool, it looks like the New Zealand squad may have taken hold of the rung just below the U.S. after the progress made last season. With 16-year-old Luke Harrold winning Gangwon 2024 Youth Olympic Games gold and earning his first World Cup podium in his first World Cup start at Secret Garden, and 18-year-old Finley Melville-Ives earning YOG silver while narrowly missing World Cup podiums a couple of times, the future is now for the Kiwis.

Throw in the always-entertaining Ben Harrington, and the fact that reigning Olympic gold medallist and 2024 X Games runner-up Nico Porteous is set to return to World Cup competition after sitting out of most of last competition season, and things are looking bright indeed in NZ.

Third overall on last last season’s World Cup rankings was Finland’s Jon Sallinen, as the Bakuriani 2023 World Champs silver medallist finished the 2023/24 season off with back-to-back podiums in Calgary. Look for the 23-year-old to carry that momentum through to the upcoming campaign.

As for the Canadians, while they may not have the unlimited depth of the U.S. squad, they’re no slouches either, with reigning World Champion Brendan Mackay leading the way.

Though he sat out the first half of last season to focus on some schooling, Mackay was back on the podium by the second of his three starts last winter, showing that he remains one of the most explosive halfpipe skiers in the world. Expected to be on the startlist throughout 2024/25, look for Mackay to earn his 10th career World Cup podium early on and then roll from there.

Finally, keep an eye on Korea’s Seung Hun Lee, fourth on last season’s halfpipe World Cup rankings and one of the most thrilling halfpipe skiers in the world today. Nobody is attacking the pipe with quite the ferocity of Lee right now, and every time the 19-year-old drops in it’s a must-watch event.

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