Snowboard World Champion Taiga Hasegawa and Mia Brookes win Big Air Klagenfurt
Jan 05, 2025·Snowboard Park & Pipe
Great Britain’s Mia Brookes and Taiga Hasegawa of Japan started the new year in style by winning Big Air Klagenfurt as the FIS Snowboard World Cup season kicked off 2025 in Austria this weekend.
Seventeen-year-old Brookes won the women’s big air event at Woerthersee Stadium on Sunday with a total score of 184.25 after she received 95.75 points for her cab 1440 melon in run three.
The run was the highest-scoring run across two days of snowboard big air competition.
Brookes’ victory is her second consecutive victory after she won the last big air event on the FIS Snowboard World Cup calendar in Beijing in December.
Japan’s Mari Fukada was runner-up to Brookes in Beijing, and the 18-year-old again took second place behind Brookes on Sunday with a score of 182.25 points.
Fukada was in pole position for most of the evening after she received 93.50 in run one for a switch back double 1260 drunk driver, before Brookes stomped her third and final run to take the lead.
Japan’s Momo Suzuki claimed third place with a total score of 166.75 points, as the 17-year-old earned her first career World Cup podium in just her third World Cup start.
Half of the women’s eight finalists hailed from Japan, with Reira Iwabuchi finishing just outside of the podium in fourth place, while double Olympic big air champion Anna Gasser (AUT) rounded out the top five.
Reigning big air Crystal Globe winner Kokomo Murase took heavy slams in both of her first two runs and elected not to drop in for run three, finishing in eighth place.
In the men’s big air, reigning World Champion Taiga Hasegawa (JPN) claimed victory on 179.75 points, ahead of runner-up Ian Matteoli (ITA) and his best-two combined score of 175.25.
Third place honours went to Norway’s Oyvind Kirkhus on 172.00 points, as the 22-year-old followed Suzuki to become the second rider of the night to earn a career first World Cup podium. Kirkhus opened the evening with a run one score of 92.00 for a switch back double rodeo 1260 nosegrab, the highest men’s run of the evening.
Hasegawa’s win on Sunday follows his ninth place finish in December in Beijing and his season-opening win at Big Air Chur in October.
Jakub Hrones (CZE) finished in fourth place for his best-ever World Cup finish, while local favourite Clemens Millauer (AUT) took fifth place.
Several big names did not qualify for the men’s final on Sunday evening, including Beijing 2022 Olympic Winter Games big air champion Su Yiming (CHN), who’s currently battling some nagging injuries, and last season’s big air Crystal Globe winner Kira Kimura (JPN).
Sunday’s victory now puts Hasegawa atop the FIS Snowboard Big Air World Cup standings with three big air World Cup events of the season completed and two to go.
In the women’s big air standings, Fukada continues to lead the field after two consecutive second place finishes and her big air season-opening win in Chur in October.
The next big air event of the FIS Snowboard World Cup calendar will take place in Kreischberg, Austria between 9 and 11 January 2025.
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