Peel and Schoenefeld prevail in Minsk
Feb 23, 2020·Freestyle
A standout night of FIS Freestyle Ski Aerials World Cup action went down under the lights in the capital city of Belarus on Saturday evening, where Australia’s Laura Peel led the charge on the women’s side of the event, while USA’s Justin Schoenefeld took his first World Cup victory in the men’s competition.
Belarus is a country with a deep tradition of strong aerials athletes and an enthusiastic fan base, and on Saturday night those fans were out in full force to watch the best-of-the-best go head-to-head on the outstanding aerials facilities at the Olympic Sports Complex Raubichi just outside of Minsk.
In the women’s event it was Laura Peel, who put down two solid runs in the finals with a superb full-tuck-full on her last attempt of the day, for which she received her career’s highest score of 106.53 points.
After coming with a third place finish in Shimao Lotus Mountain (CHN) back in December, followed up by a runner-up spot last week in Moscow (RUS), Peel managed to step things up in Minsk and led the way in both rounds of the finals. The Aussie aerial skier won the competition on Saturday, for her first victory of the season and her career’s third World Cup top spot.
“It feels amazing”, said Peel, “We had some thought conditions today, but I think everyone worked hard to get the event on. I didn’t get quite as many training jumps as I would have liked, but you know I’ve been doing it for a while and I really relied on my experience this weekend. I honestly couldn’t be happier.”
The second place on the day went to China’s Xu Mengtao, who scored 95.06 points for her lay-full-full. With her runner-up position on Saturday, Xu also moved back into first place in the aerials World Cup ranking with 325 points after five competitions and only two more events left in the season. Saturday’s winner Peel sits in second spot, just six points behind the leader Xu.
Another Chinese athlete Xu Sicun rounded out the women’s podium in third place for her first top-3 finish in the 2019/20 World Cup campaign. Xu received a score of 87.92 points, while also performing a triple flip jump - a lay-tuck-full.
Over on the men’s side USA’s Justin Schoenefeld led a North American sweep of the podium, coming in hot with his career’s very first World Cup victory, in just his eight World Cup appearance. Schoenenfeld, who made his World Cup debut at last year’s event in Lake Placid, put down an impressive performance on Saturday night, stomping his tricks all day long. In the big final, the 21-year-old aerialist put down a superb double full-full-full for a score of 124.89 points, which at the end of the day was just enough to get Schoenefeld on top of the podium.
“I’m just speechless right now”, said Schoenefeld, “I just kept on training back in December and January, not really thinking about the competitions. And I think that helped me a lot today. Everything happened perfectly and I landed every single comp jump so I’m really happy.”
Lewis Irving of Canada finished the competition in Minsk in second place, for just his career’s second top-3 finish. On Saturday Irwing landed his double full-full-full, for which he received a score of 124.43 points, loosing the battle for the top spot against Schoenefeld by just a 0.4 point.
USA’s Christopher Lillis completed the men’s podium in third place with 122.17 points, also for his double full-full-full in the big final of Saturday’s competition. It was the second career’s podium for Lillis, on the venue where he took his first World Cup victory back in 2016.
In the men’s aerials ranking, Maxim Burov regained his yellow World Cup leader bib, leading the way with 273 points following his fourth place finish in Minsk. Pavel Krotov (RUS) and Noe Roth (SUI) are tied for second place with 254 points.
The FIS Freestyle Ski Aerials World Cup will now travel to Almaty (KAZ), with the penultimate stop of the season slated to go down next Friday, February 28 at the brand new venue in Oi Qaragai.
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