Chloe Kim returns as Laax Open readies for explosive halfpipe showdown
Jan 18, 2024·Snowboard Park & Pipe
FIS Snowboard World Cup action at the 2024 Laax Open hits fever pitch over the next two days, with Friday seeing men’s slopestyle semifinals and women’s and men’s halfpipe semifinals going down, followed on Saturday by the single biggest day of the Park & Pipe season, with both slopestyle and pipe finals taking to a couple of the world’s finest venues on the slopes of Laax’s Crap Sogn Gion.
The Laax Open halfpipe event in particular is perhaps the most highly-anticipated competition of the 2023/24 season, with a full slate of the world’s absolute best on hand and ready to push their limits in what is generally agreed to be the best pipe on the planet.
Most of the riders dropping in on the Laax Open halfpipe competition have already been on the scene here in Laax for well over a week, and from clips leaked last week through to what we’ve seen in training this week, what we are gearing up to see here is a contest that has the potential to be an absolute game changer.
Friday’s semifinals in Laax are slated to get underway beginning with the women at 9:35 CET, followed by men’s heat one at 12:10, finally heat two at 14:20. Saturday’s finals, meanwhile, will be going down under the lights and in front of a gallery of thousands, with the first drop hitting the pipe at 18:15.
Finals will be streamed live on the Laax Open website and on RedBull TV.
CHLOE KIM RETURNS
The biggest news of the week on the snowboard side of things here in Laax is the return to action of the inimitable Chloe Kim, who is on site and ready to rock the bib for the first time since she successfully defended Olympic gold at the Beijing 2022 Olympic Winter Games nearly two years ago.
Perhaps the most dominant halfpipe rider of all time, 23-year-old Kim has not finished anywhere but in first place in a competition she’s entered since 2017, claiming two Olympic gold medals, two World Championships gold medals, three X Games titles, one halfpipe crystal globe, a couple of Dew Tours victories and five World Cup wins in that time.
Quite simply, if Chloe Kim is dropping in on a competition, everybody else is fighting for second.
However, this week’s event will mark a new chapter in annals of halfpipe history, as for the first time 15-year-old phenom Gaon Choi of South Korea will face off against her mentor and hero, Kim.
One of the most exciting new riders to hit the World Cup in a long time, Choi is considered by many to be the heir apparent to Kim, and a showdown between the two at the Milano-Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games (when Choi should be nearing the peak of her powers) is a possibility that already has the snowboard salivating.
This will be Choi’s first Laax Open - in fact, it will be just the second World Cup start of her career - and it remains to be be seen how she handles the pressure on the biggest stage of the season. However, if a win at her maiden World Cup start in Copper Mountain (USA) back in December showed us anything, it’s that Choi is more than ready to claim her share of the spotlight.
Currently leading the World Cup standings for the first time in here career is Maddie Mastro (USA), after back-to-back third place finishes at the first two competitions of the season. Mastro also finished third last season here in Laax, and will be looking for that or better this time around.
Last season’s Laax Open champ and 2023 double crystal globe winner Mitsuki Ono comes into Laax with a second-place finish from Copper Mountain to her credit, and she, along with Sena and Ruki Tomita, represents a strong Japanese team. Meanwhile, the likes of Brook D’hondt (CAN), Liu Jaiyu (CHN) and Leilani Ettel (GER) are a few of the other names to watch out for on the women’s side.
MEN’S COMPETITION PROMISES PIPE PROGRESSION SHOWCASE
We’ve done some quick math, and it seems possible that, if the pieces come together, we could possibly see SEVEN triple corks in the men’s finals on Saturday night. Which is to say that, should all of Ayumu Hirano (JPN), Chaeun Lee (KOR), Yuto Totsuka (JPN), Valentino Guseli (AUS), Ruka Hirano (JPN) and Scotty James (AUS) make it to the finals showdown and successfully stomp the biggest tricks in their arsenal, we’ll bear witness to a level of pipe riding that was frankly unimaginable even just a couple of years ago.
You might have noticed there’s only six names on that list above, but that we counted a potentiality of seven triples. That’s because 17-year-old Lee, the reigning World Champion and current World Cup leader, last week became the first rider in halfpipe history to stomp back-to-back triples, here in the Laax pipe.
Lee’s feat lit snowboard social media on fire and stoked anticipation for this weekend’s competition even higher. If he’s able to put the combo together in the Laax Open finals he could well be impossible to beat - even by the towering talents who stand alongside him in the halfpipe triple club.
With that being said, all five of the other riders mentioned above have unique and unparalleled skill sets of their own, and should we see all five make finals and put down clean runs on Saturday night, things could be shaping up to make for a hard night indeed for the judges.
While Lee has second and third place finishes so far this year, he’s still looking for his first World Cup triumph. Instead, we saw James taking the W in Copper mountain, followed up by a victory for Ayumu Hirano in Copper. Meanwhile, both Ruka Hirano and Totsuka also have a podium apiece so far this season, meaning that the only one from the big six we’re speaking about here without a World Cup top-3 this season is Guseli.
However, Guseli has his own trump card aside from his cab triple cork 1440, in that last week he become the first rider on the planet to stomp a frontside 1620 in the halfpipe, complete with a grab and a clean landing. His own share of a 2023/24 World Cup top-3 is well within his reach this week.
It doesn’t stop there, though. Beijing 2022 Olympic and Bakuriani 2023 World Champs bronze medallist Jan Scherrer (SUI) will be bringing his unique approach to the halfpipe game to his home-soil World Cup. Lucas Foster (USA) is knocking at the door to the halfpipe elite VIP lounge with an ever-improving run that could included a double alley-oop mctwist. Kaishu Hirano (JPN) will be looking to set yet another world record with his outrageous first-hit backside air. Shuichuro Shigeno (JPN) one-upped Guseli and stomped a world’s-first frontside 1800 in the pipe last week, although without a grab. Andre Hoeflich (GER) is quietly perhaps the most stylish rider in halfpipe snowboarding. The list goes on.
Any way you slice it, this weekend’s Laax Open halfpipe competition is going to be the must-watch event of the season, and we can’t wait to see how it all pans out.
QUICK LINKS
Laax Open data page (start lists, live scoring, results
