Peel and Wang open Deer Valley week with top spots in aerials
Jan 13, 2022·Freestyle
The first day of competition at the Intermountain Healthcare FIS Freestyle Skiing moguls World Cup at Deer Valley Resort (USA) went down in typically big way, with Australia’s Laura Peel going all-out for top spot in women’s competition and Wang Xindi (CHN) leading the charge for Chinese sweep of the podium over on the men’s side.
With a little slow start into 2021/22 in terms of results, the win in Deer Valley came for reigning World Champion Laura Peel came just in time for the final competition ahead of the Olympic Winter Games in China. With surprisingly only one top-3 finish before the event on “White Owl” aerials venue, the Aussie skier finally managed to grab the win, and she did it in extraordinary fashion with one of the highest score we’ve seen in women’s competition over the last couple of years.
Despite struggling with landings so far in the World Cup campaign, Peel’s resilience and patience paid off big time in Deer Valley, after the 32-year-old stomped a squeaky clean Full-Full-Full, for which she received a massive score of 118.05 points and indisputable top spot on the day.
The Australia outscored the rest of the field by over 35 points, and to put things a little bit into perspective Peel’s score would also put her on the podium in the men’s event on Wednesday.
The second place went to China’s Kong Fanyu, who continues to showcase a steady and high form with her fourth top-3 finish so far in 2021/22. In the big final on Wednesday, however, Kong failed to land her Lay-Full-Full properly, throwing a little front flip on the landing, and with crash score of 84.58 points she finished in a runner-up position.
Hanna Huskova, who will be defending her gold Olympic medal from PyeongChang in just over three weeks from now, rounded out the women’s podium in third place with 82.65 points for her Lay-Full.
Over in the men’s competition Wang Xindi led a spectacular podium sweep for the Chinese team with his career’s second World Cup win. In the best-of 6 big final Wang came in hot with a double Full-Full-Full for a score of 122.62 that earned him a well-deserved come-back on top of the World Cup podium.
Repeating his last week’s performance from Le Relais (CAN) was Yango Longxiao, who once again impressed throughout the entire competition and finished in second place with 112.67 points, also for his double Full-Full-Full.
Despite crashing on his double Full-Full double Full Sun Jiaxu completed the Chinese podium sweep in third place with 83.50 points.
In the aerials World Cup ranking it is still Xu Mengtao (CHN) and Maxim Burov (RUS), who lead the way after six of nine competitions scheduled for the season.
With the aerialist wrapping up the first portion of 2021/22 campaign, the Deer Valley’s freestyle extravaganza now switch its focus to “Champion Run” moguls course, where final back-to-back moguls competition ahead of the Games are scheduled to go down on Thursday and Friday.
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