Brookes and Ogiwara make their mark on snowboard big air in Beijing
Dec 01, 2024·Snowboard Park & Pipe
A new generation of snowboard stars has shown the world what they’re made out of, after teenagers Mia Brookes (GBR) and Hiroto Ogiwara (JPN) won the second big air contest of the FIS Snowboard World Cup season.
Seventeen-year-old Brookes was the first snowboarder to claim victory on Sunday on the Shougang Park big air jump with the highest-scoring run of the women’s competition.
The judges awarded Brookes 94.00 for the cab 1440 stalefish in her third run after the British teen managed just 52.00 for her first attempt at the same trick in her second run.
Brookes’ final run put her in first place with a total score of 179.75 ahead of Japanese rider Mari Fukada’s 176.75, while two-time Olympic big air champion Anna Gasser (AUT) took third place on 169.00.
Five of the women’s eight finalists were Japanese, with Miyabi Onitsuka and Reira Iwabuchi finishing in fourth and fifth place respectively.
Japan had better luck in the men’s finals on Sunday with 19-year-old Hiroto Ogiwara taking first place after stomping his first and second runs for a combined total of 169.50.
Ogiwara took the lead despite the fact that Italy’s Ian Matteoli is the first rider in competition history to stomp a 2160.
Matteoli nearly broke the scale with a score of 97.75 for his groundbreaking 2160 Weddle to tailgrab – the highest-scored run across two days of men’s and women’s competition.
Unfortunately, Matteoli’s third run score of 67.75 for his cab 1800 Indy to nose grab left him just short of his Japanese counterpart when the results were tallied, with the 19-year-old Italian finishing in second place with 165.50.
Rounding out the podium with a little history of his own was local talent Wenlong Yang (CHN) who claimed third place and the first podium of his World Cup career with a score of 159.25.
Sunday proved difficult for some of the discipline’s most favoured snowboarders, with reigning World Champion Taiga Hasegawa (JPN) ending the day in ninth place ahead of Beijing 2022 Olympic Winter Games big air gold medallist Su Yiming (CHN).
Su fell on his first and second runs before pulling off a back 1980 Indy in his third run, but the 89.00 was not enough to move him up from last place.
It was a similar story for women’s Beijing 2022 bronze medallist Kokomo Murase (JPN), who topped qualifications a day earlier but finished in last place on Sunday after falling in all of her runs.
Gasser’s third-place finish on Sunday also marks a return to form for the 33-year-old after she did not advance past the qualification round at Big Air Chur in October and missed the podium for the first time in her World Cup big air career.
The podium was the 30th of her World Cup career, and puts Gasser just one top-three finish behind Chinese halfpipe rider Cai Xuetong for the most in FIS Snowboard Park & Pipe World Cup history.
The next big air contest of the 2024/25 FIS Snowboard World Cup circuit will take place in Klagenfurt, Austria between 3 and 5 January 2025.
FACTS & FIGURES
Anna Gasser (AUT) has amassed 19 big air World Cup podium finishes and is the all-time leader across women and men’s competition.
Gasser has nine World Cup big air wins. Her closest rival Reira Iwabuchi (JPN) has seven.
Stefan Gimpl (AUT) remains the men’s big air leader with 17 top-three World Cup finishes, including nine wins. Gimpl retired from the World Cup circuit 2010.
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