2021/22 slopestyle World Cup season preview
Dec 24, 2021·Snowboard Park & Pipe
The 2021/22 FIS Snowboard Park & Pipe slopestyle World Cup season is finally ready to get underway next week, when the world’s best riders will descend on Calgary’s Canada Olympic Park for the first of three slope events slated to take place between now and the Beijing 2022 Olympic Winter Games in China.
With qualifications beginning on December 30th and finals slated for a special New Year’s Day 2022 time slot, Calgary will be the first of six competitions on the slopestyle World Cup calendar for this season, and after Calgary we’ll stay on in North America for another week for the fifth World Cup edition of the Mammoth Mountain Toyota US Grand Prix, taking place from January 6-8.
From Mammoth it’s over to Europe for one final tune-up before Beijing, as the legendary Laax Open will once again highlight this season’s calendar from January 13-15, giving us a worthy springboard into the biggest show of the season in Beijing.
In Beijing the slopestyle competitions will be the first two snowboard medal events of the Games, with women’s qualifications happening on February 5th, women’s finals and men’s qualifications on Feb 6th, and men’s finals on the 7th.
Following Beijing we’ll restart the World Cup calendar with another season highlight, as we head to Bakuriani, Georgia, for the 2023 World Championships test event competition from March 4-6. We’ll then keep things rolling in Europe to finish out the winter, first in the Czech Republic at Spindleruv Mlyn from March 18-19, and then, finally, we’ll close out the 2021/22 FIS Snowboard campaign in Switzerland, with the Silvaplana slopestyle World Cup taking place from March 25-27.
WHO TO WATCH: WOMEN
In the Covid-19 shortened 2020/21 season, slopestyle was the only one of the three FIS Snowboard Park & Pipe events to see the three competitions necessary in order to award the crystal globes at the end of the winter, and come time for that moment it was Anna Gasser (AUT) who would be holding not only that the slopestyle trophy, but the Park & Pipe overall globe as well.
Gasser had one win and three top-5 finishes in last season’s slopestyle World Cup competitions on her way to earning the fourth and fifth globes of her career. With back-to-back second place finishes in the two big air World Cups we’ve had this season the 30-year-old has shown she’s in fine form as she looks to defend her big air gold medal from PyeongChang 2018 - and improve on her 15th place slopestyle finish from the same Games.
Behind Gasser on last season’s slopestyle rankings was Japan’s Kokomo Murase, and the 17-year-old leads a collection of exceptional riders from her nation that also includes the likes of Reira Iwabuchi (who’s fresh off a big air victory in Steamboat a couple of weeks ago), Miyabi Onitsuka and Rina Yoshika.
Just below Murase on last year’s slopestyle rankings in third we find Australia’s Tess Coady, who has emerged over the past couple of seasons as one of the most stylish and consistent riders in the women’s field, with four podiums in her last five slopestyle World Cup competitions.
This brings us to the elephant in the room and the biggest name on anybody’s list of who-to-watch for 2021/22 - Jamie Anderson, who finished fourth on last year’s slopestyle rankings, taking the win at the Laax Open World Cup, as well as winning both slopestyle AND big air at last year’s X Games, and earning slopestyle World Championships silver in Aspen (USA).
Anderson is the two-time reigning Olympic gold medallist (as well as the winner of essentially everything else there is to win in snowboarding over the course of her career), and at 31 years old she remains the standard by which all others are measured in women’s competitive snowboarding. On her best day there’s almost no one in the world who can keep her off the top of the podium, even as she enters her 18th season of top-level competition.
Which then brings us to the rider who’s likely to be Anderson’s biggest obstacle for the top of the podium this season - Zoi Sadowski-Synnott of New Zealand.
Sadowski-Synnott claimed the gold medal in the Aspen 2021 World Championships slopestyle competition, denying Anderson the one title she has yet to claim in her career. The 20-year-old then followed that up by going all the way to the finals at the Natural Selection backcountry freestyle competition in Alaska, where she finished in second place and staked a claim to the title of best all-around women’s rider in the world.
It wasn’t all breezy dominance for Sadowski-Synnott, however, as she finished second behind Anderson in the X Games slopestyle while taking bronze in the big air, and the battle between the two at the top of the game through this season is going to be a must-watch drama in the coming weeks. Having said that, Sadowski-Synnott is looking on top of her game already this year, having just taken the win at Dew Tour in Copper Mountain last week in her first competition of the season.
Others to watch out for on the women’s side include PyeongChang slopestyle silver medallist and Aspen 2021 big air World Champion Laurie Blouin (CAN), PyeongChang 2018 slopestyle bronze medallist Enni Rukajarvi (FIN), 2020 slopestyle crystal globe winner Katie Ormerod (GBR), Annika Morgan (GER) and three-time X Games medallist Hailey Langland (USA).
WHO TO WATCH: MEN
Where do you start on the men’s side of things?
Up on the glaciers of Europe this pre-season we witnessed a kind of day-to-day progression that might have been the most frenzied in snowboard history. Riders both well-established and nearly unheard-of were dropping freshly-learned 1800s and 1980s with off-axis variations that left even the best trick-callers amongst us scratching our heads at points. It was a bonanza of NBDs (or, at least, RARELY-been-dones), and it upped the ante in a serious way for the competition season.
We’ve already seen the spill-over from the autumn insanity to the competition season after China’s Su Yiming become the first rider ever to land 1800s spinning both ways in a competition, on his way to victory at the Steamboat big air competition earlier this month.
What should also be noted about Su’s victory in Steamboat is that it came in just his third career World Cup start, as the 17-year-old went toe-to-toe with some of the absolute biggest names in snowboarding and emerged victorious while also setting a new precedent for what’s possible in a big air event.
However, slopestyle is a whole different beast than big air, and though throwing something like a 1800 or a quad cork happens once in a while in slopestyle competition, that lone hammer doesn’t mean much if your rail game is lacking or your other jumps are just set-up tricks. Slopestyle means top-to-bottom mastery, and there’s a select group of riders out there who have that game on lock and are able to step up when it matters most.
First up, Marcus Kleveland of Norway - last season’s slopestyle and Park & Pipe overall crystal globe winner, Aspen 2021 slopestyle World Champion, and one of the most creative riders to ever strap on a snowboard.
Kleveland claimed two wins and a third-place finish in last season’s slopestyle World Cups, while also earning World Champs gold in slope, bronze in big air, and taking X Games big air gold. Kleveland is the full package, with a trick arsenal that might be the deepest in the world, and when he’s got his stomping boots on there’s few who can touch him. With the likes of Mons Roisland and Staale Sandbech riding along with Kleveland, the Norwegians are looking as strong as ever.
Behind Kleveland on the World Cup rankings was Canada’s Liam Brearley, and while the 18-year-old has certainly shown promise over the past two seasons, most of the attention in the coming months will be focused on his teammates Mark McMorris, Sebastien Toutant and Max Parrot.
To list the accolades of those three riders here would take several extra paragraphs and we’re already running long, but if you’ve paid attention to the competition scene in even the most casual of ways at any point in the past decade, you will know their names and have an idea of what the Canadian heavyweights are capable of.
Then there’s the US squad, with reigning Olympic gold medallist Red Gerard leading the way as he enters the World Cup slopestyle season fresh off his second-straight Dew Tour victory. With Dusty Henrickson, Brock Crouch, Judd Henkes, Chris Corning and Sean Fitzsimons also flying the Stars and Stripes, the US team looks as strong as one would expect from the birthplace of shred.
Speaking of stacked squads, the Japanese are, as always, at the forefront of the conversation. While the slopestyle/big air team hasn’t enjoyed the dominance that their halfpipe men have over the past few seasons, with the likes of crystal globe winners Takeru Otsuka and Ruki Tobita, along with Kaito Hamada, Hiroaki Kunitake and 15-year-old phenom Taiga Hasegawa (the first rider EVER to stomp 1800s all four ways), the Japanese have more than enough pieces in place to push for podiums throughout this season.
Not to be forgotten are the Swedes, with Sven Thorgren and Niklas Mattsson leading the way. Mattsson claimed his first career World Cup slopestyle victory at the Laax Open last season, while Thorgren remains one of the world’s most influential riders, and started this season off with a third-place finish at the Big Air Chur World Cup to get the ball rolling on what he hopes to be a successful 2021/22.
Leon Vockensperger (GER) last season emerged as Germany’s most talented rider since maybe Christophe Schmidt, grabbing the first men’s slopestyle World Cup podium for his nation in over a decade when he finished second at Laax. He, along with the likes of Rene Rinnekangas (FIN), Sebbe de Buck (BEL), Clemens Millauer (AUT) and Big Air Chur winner Jonas Boesiger (SUI) will be holding it down for nations that don’t have the top-to-bottom strength of some of the other teams we’ve mentioned here.
Lots to watch out for this season, and plenty of time to see how it all shakes out. Here’s hoping everyone stays safe and healthy and we get to enjoy the full-pull of the FIS Snowboard slopestyle World Cup calendar in 2021/22.
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