Gasser and Corning favourites for Saturday's Modena big air World Cup
Nov 02, 2018·Snowboard Park & Pipe
Modena (ITA) - The 2018/19 FIS Snowboard World Cup season kicks back into gear this weekend with the first Northern Hemisphere event of the year, as the Modena Skipass FIS big air World Cup is set to take to the skies of the Italian metropolis Saturday, November 3. Qualifications in Modena will begin at 10:00, with finals happening under the lights at 18:30 CET.
Saturday’s Modena competition coincides with the 25th anniversary of the Italian metropolis’s Skipass winter sport and tourism festival, and expectations are high for the Modena’s inaugural turn hosting a World Cup competition. Modena Skipass has pulled out all the stops with the competition venue, putting together a man-made structure of steel and snow that will stand 46m tall and 130m long when all is said and done and it’s ready for competition, making it the largest such ramp to be built in Italy and amongst the biggest ever constructed for World Cup competition.
Though heavy rain forced the cancellation of Friday’s training programme, Saturday’s finals are expected to go down according to the original schedule.
However, the athletes listed above are going to have their work cut out for them come competition time in Modena, as they will be going up against a list of athletes who were on hand and looking to already be in mid-season form back in September at the 2018/19 season-opening World Cup in Cardrona (NZL)
The Cardrona men’s competition saw a seemingly endless stream of double and triple-cork variations going down on the massive big air jump, with riders like Japan’s Takeru Otsuka and Yutaro Miyazawa, Norway’s Mons Roisland, the USA’s Kyle Mack, and others all wowing the crowd and judges.
However, it was a show-stopping quad-cork backside 1800 from Chris Corning of the USA that - combined with a flat-spin 1440 on his second jump - gave him a staggering two-jump score of 190.8 for the first World Cup win of the young season, serving notice that the 19-year-old could be extremely tough to beat in 2018/19.
The ladies’ side of things in Cardrona was also an impressive show, with the incredibly strong Japanese team taking the top two spots via standout performances from the teenage tandem of Reira Iwabuchi and Miyabi Onitsuka - both of whom stomped massive 720s both ways to finish first and second, respectively. Both Iwabuchi and Onitsuka will also be on hand in Modena and are favourites to have repeat podium performances there.
With so many top athletes on hand in Modena, the biggest jump ramp ever built in Italy awaiting the riders and looking to be in perfect shape for competition, 100,000CHF in prize money up for grabs, and the atmosphere of the Skipass festival’s 25th anniversary surrounding the competition, all the pieces are in place for an exciting opening to the 2018/19 FIS World Cup season in the northern hemisphere.
QUICK LINKS:
FIS Modena data page (event programme, start lists, live scoring, results)
Photos from Thursday training in Modena (for editorial use, with credit as noted)
