2018/19 halfpipe World Cup finals set to hit Mammoth Mountain
Mar 05, 2019·Snowboard Park & Pipe
Mammoth Mountain (USA) - The World Cup finals for 2018/19 FIS Snowboard halfpipe and slopestyle World Cup seasons are slated to go down this week in California’s Mammoth Mountain (USA), although with a variable forecast that is calling for some periods of heavy snow over the coming days the schedule will be a work in progress as officials and organizers seek to fit in the most successful event possible around the weather.
Already, halfpipe qualifiers have been moved from their scheduled date twice, as they were firstly slated to take place on Thursday, March 7, before they were moved to Tuesday, March 5, only to be postponed from the date when a heavy storm moved into Mammoth over the past 48 hours. However, with the weather looking to be clear for Thursday morning, a qualification schedule has finally been locked in, with ladies' and men's heats going down in double-up format beginning at 9:40am.
The ladies World Cup standings are currently lead by China’s Cai Xuetong, and the 25-year-old is looking to make history this season by winning her fifth World Cup title to become the all-time leader in that category. Holding a 780 point lead over second-ranked rider Queralt Castellet (ESP), with 2,900 points to Castellet’s 2,180, Cai looks to be all but assured of completing the task this week in Mammoth and adding another accolade to a career that is chock full of them.
With top names like Chloe Kim and Maddie Mastro of the USA not on the starting list for this week’s competition, others to look out for behind Cai and Castellet include Haruna Matsumoto of Japan, who finished second at Mammoth in 2016/17, Matsumoto’s teammate and sixth-overall on the 2018/19 World Cup rankings Hikaru Oe, and World Cup fifth-overall Verena Rohrer (SUI).
In the men’s competition, the top name in halfpipe snowboarding has just wrapped up a season for the ages, as Scotty James (AUS) took top spot in every competition from the X Games to the Utah 2019 world championships to last weekend’s Burton Open. However, after ending on a high note at the Open hanging up the competition bib for the season, James has left the door open for another rider to step and end the World Cup season with a victory.
The current top rider on the World Cup standings and looking to repeat his crystal globe-winning performance from last season is Japan’s Yuto Totsuka, who comes into Mammoth with three straight World Cup podiums (including a win at the last World Cup in Calgary), a silver medal at the Utah 2019 world championships, and a third-place performance at the Burton Open to his credit.
However, with 2,760 points, Totsuka sits just 550 points ahead of his teammate Ruka Hirano, meaning that if Totsuka should falter this week the 16-year-old Hirano could very well put down a top performance and capture what would be his first World Cup title in his very first season on tour.
The Swiss duo of Jan Scharrer and Patrick Burgener (the Utah 2019 world champs bronze medallist) are a threat in every competition that they strap in for, while the host US team will be fielding a strong squad with the likes of Chase Josey, Jake Pates and Louie Vito all slated to drop in, with surprise entry Vito taking part his first World Cup competition in over a year. Meanwhile, both Kent Callister of Australia and Canada’s Derek Livingston will be looking to finish strong seasons off on a high note.
WATCH FINALS LIVE:
Eurosport Player, NBC Sports Gold, ORF Sport +, CBC Sport Streaming, Eurosport 1 Asia/Pacific, Polsat Sport Extra
QUICK LINKS:
Mammoth data page (start lists, live scoring, results)
Photos (coming soon)
