Park & pipe athletes wrap up 2018 in Secret Garden

Dec 21, 2018·Snowboard Park & Pipe

Takeru Otsuka in action in Secret Garden

The final park & pipe events of 2018 went down on Friday in Secret Garden with local hero Cai Xuetong and Switzerland’s Jan Scherrer taking wins in the halfpipe competitions, while Miyabi Onitsuka and Takeru Otsuka of Japan led the way in the slopestyle showdown.

Despite quite strong wind gusts in the morning, the mother nature decided to play along one more time, and the weather calmed down just in time as the first athletes were about to drop in the perfectly-shaped superpipe to kick off the final phase of the second World Cup pipe event of the season.

It was an early start for the halfpipe finals in a big day of FIS Snowboard World Cup competition in Secret Garden, with bluebird skies and an impressive crowd of local fans welcoming the top six ladies and top ten men who came ready to throw down in each of three runs of the competition.

On the ladies’ side of things, fan favourite and top qualifier Cai Xuetong took an early lead with her first run of back-to-back 5s, air to fakie, and back-to-back 7s for a score of 88.75 points, and that score would hold to grant the Chinese ripper her first victory of the season. That was her second time on the podium in 2018/2019 following her third place finish at Copper Mountain. With 1600 points to her name Cai will now head home for holidays holding top spot in the World Cup rankings and holding on to the yellow leader’s bib.

Finishing just behind Cai was Swiss rider Verena Rohrer, who stomped a similar combo of back-to-back 5s and 7s in her run and grabbed her career’s first World Cup podium.

Third place on the day went to Japan’s Kurumi Imai, also taking her first ever top-3 World Cup spot.

Over on the men’s side it was Jan Scherrer who kept it big and clean, reaching a high-score of 95.50 points for his run including back-to-back doubles, followed by back-to-back 10s, and a stylish alley-oop 360 cross rocket for his very first victory on the World Cup tour. With the win in China Sherrer also jumped on top of the halfpipe World Cup ranking.

The second and third place went to the Japanese duo of Ruka Hirano and Yuto Totsuka, respectively, with the the World Cup rookie Hirano scoring his first podium on tour, with just two World Cup appearances to his credit.

Onitsuka and Otsuka lead the Japanese party in slopestyle competition

Things were equally interesting over on the slope course, where the first slopestyle World Cup competition of the season went down in style, with a strong field of athletes getting in their first competition runs at the future venue of the 2022 Beijing Olympic Winter Games.

In the ladies’ event the Japanese duo of Miyabi Onitsuka and Reira Iwabuchi took the top two spots on the day. Despite an early lead from Iwabuchi, it was the top qualifier Onitsuka who stepped things up in her third and final run, cleaning things up on the rails and going for the only 900 in the ladies’ competition, earning a score of 86.20 and first slopestyle victory of the 2018/19 World Cup season.

With Onitsuka stepping it up on the last run of the day, Iwabuchi had to settle for a score of 85.21 and second place on the day, while Lucile Lefevre of France rounded-out the ladies’ podium in third with a score of 70.56, earning her first World Cup top-3 seven years after she last stepped onto the podium by winning a the Ruka halfpipe World Cup back in 2011.

Finishing up a huge day for the Japanese snowboard team was Takeru Otsuka, as the 17-year-old stormed to victory in the men’s event, getting on top of the ranking with his first run of 87.10 points. Otsuka impressed with his dizzying rail section while also stomping big spins on the jumps with his signature smoothness, including a frontside 1440, a backside 1260 and a cab 1260, for his career’s second World Cup victory, and his first in slopestyle.

Coming in runner-up to Otsuka was Sweden’s Niclas Mattsson with a score of 80.21, while Russia’s Vlad Khadarin impressed with a score of 75.50 to earn his first World Cup podium, placing third on Friday in Secret Garden.

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