Spinning Into The New Season

The Stubai Zoo snowpark hosted the opening of the Freeski World Cup Slopestyle season and the world’s best athletes unpacked their newest tricks.

By Chris Cummins

For the second year running the Stubai glacier in Tyrol hosted the opening event of the FIS Freeski World Cup slopestyle season, Austria’s only spot on the busy freeski elite competition tour.

Conscious, perhaps, of the honour, the capricious weather gods of the Tyrolean mountains were on their best behavior. There was blue sky and hardly a breath of wind at 3,000 metres up on the glacier; and fast snow meant the scene was set for the stars to push the limits of their sport:

“This is the best, best, weather we could have asked for today,” enthused American skiier Maggie Voisin. She added an ominous warning. “When the conditions are like this, everyone is going to try and throw down their biggest runs.”

New Season, New Tricks

Freeskiing is such a dynamic sport that tricks which seemed pioneering just 12 months ago are considered bread-and-butter routine tricks by the beginning of the next season. So, by hosting the World Cup’s opening event Stubai was the stage to see what new tricks the athletes had brought to the party.

This is the result of lots of hard work and experimentation over the summer. 20-year old Patrick Dew from Canada, for example, said he and his team had been up to a centre called Maximize in Quebec to practice jumping onto air bags, before travelling on to Saas Fee in Switzerland to try to convert those newly invented tricks onto snow.

He said there was an onus on finding a trick that was stylish and unique because just going bigger won’t work in the long run: “Really you can only spin so much on the jumps, so you have to set yourself apart some way.”

Choosing Between Likes or Suprises

“Every different national team has a different approach,” explained freeride scene veteran and renowned coach TJ Schiller, “and it is amazing what these guys are doing in terms of tricks every week.”

Some skiers, explains Schiller, like to keep their experimentations close to their chests, hoping to surprise their rivals when the autumn competition season begins.

Others upload the footage of their spiraling feats of creative athleticism onto Instagram or Facebook. This is an image-conscious and marketing–based sport, where „like"’ on social media seem worth almost as much as World Cup points.

Mishaps Are Part Of The Process

Young Austrian star Laura Wallner, a local of Stubai, had been training on a water ramp in Carinthia but admitted it was a mental jump as much as a physical one to go from relaxed water-based training to competition on the hard snow of winter. No Austrians qualified for the finals. There was disappointment too for Maggie Voisin, who came last in the women’s finals, but she sees early season mishaps as all part of the process.

“It was the first time I’ve ever tried my double in a Slopestyle run,” she told me, “so for me just to be out here trying it is big in itself.

An Imperious Teenager

While Maggie has some issues to iron out, the youngest athlete in the finals of this World Cup opener, 16-year old Kelly Sildaru of Estonia arrived in Stubai looking like she’d really done her homework after the summer.

Still on the comeback route after a long injury lay off, she put down a Right Switch 1080 Mute and a Left Switch 1080 Mute off the kickers in her second run, following with a smooth rails section. It earned her 88,46 points and the victory.

The performance so impressive that the arena commentator Nico Zazek excitedly called it “maybe the best run in women’s slopestyle history”.

Worryingly Kelly feels there is still room for improvement in this World Championships’ season. “The grabs on my jumps could have been better, but overall I am pretty satisfied,” she told me in a matter-of-fact tone that contrasted strongly with the euphoria that is gathering around this super talent. Sildaru already has two X-Games Slopestyle gold medals in her rapidly filling trophy cabinet.

The Competition Is Getting Tougher

The young stars are pushing the boundaries. It’s no longer a shock to see an athlete born in this millennium at the top of this youthful sport. At the age of 26, James ‘Woodsy’ Woods from Britain is considered a veteran and he says the sport has developed massively during his career:

“The biggest thing that is changed is just the depth of talent,” said the charming Brit, who now exudes the relaxed aura of an elder statesman. “It’s incredible. Anyone in the world’s top 30 or 40 could win on any given day. Before there were a few top athletes who would consistently be on top, now the competition is so open.“

A Whoop Of Swedish Joy

It wasn’t Woodsy’s day on the Stubai glacier, and he says that these days making it to a finals day feels like a triumph. But, in a nice balancing act to Sildaru’s teenage sparkle, the winner of the men’s event was the oldest competitor in the field.

At 27-years of age Swedish eccentric Henrik Harlaut is at a point of his career where many freeskiers have turned their backs on competition skiing. Henrik, however, exuded a joyful exuberance for his sport that doesn’t seemed to have waned since his own teenage years and his skiing seems as fresh as ever.

A Switch Triple 1260 and a Double Cork 1260 in his first run brought him an unassailable total of 88,88 and he whooped with joy as he swept into the finishing area.

Competing in a quality field where to win you have to go beyond your comfort zone. Henrik hadn’t landed a Switch Triple 1260 in practice and had messed up his rails too in training, so, understandably, he was enjoying the satisfaction of a run going exactly according to plan.

“It’s such a nice feeling because every trick these days is so hard,” he told me. “Especially on this course, I feel you don’t have a single moment to chill. You just have to pull off your best trick, followed by your best trick, followed by your best trick. Bam! Bam! Bam!"

It was Harlaut’s first Slopestyle contest since the Olympics 9 months ago and it was his first ever World Cup slopestyle victory. He celebrated in style, belting out an impromptu rendition of the Swedish national anthem at the awards ceremony.

Why Does This Event Matter?

As the World Cup tour moves on, we were left mulling over what this prestigious visit means for the Austrian freeskiing scene?

Laura Wallner, despite missing out on the finals, felt it was really significant: “For us it is very important that we have a World Cup event at home and that we can represent our sport to Austria,” said the local heroine of Stubai.

The event was on live TV and it was a chance for athletes like Laura to showcase their skills to wider audiences:

“I think it is really special what we are doing and there are not that many people capable of doing it,” she told me. “I think it is a really awesome sport and I hope many people are watching it.”

Getting The Next Generation Involved

Erich Flatcher, the tireless organizer of the FIS World Cup event, deserves a lot of credit for bringing the World Cup tour to Austria. He says Stubai, which is easily reachable from the urban centre of Innsbruck is the perfect location for an event of this magnitude:

“I think it is important to bring the sport as close as possible to the freeskiing community,” he told me. “The event needs to be closely accessible to young skiers. There are many young athletes just starting out dreaming of a career as a freeskiers and we want to help them get in touch with the pros of the tour.

It’s disappointing for the self-heralded “ski nation number one” Austria that no domestic athletes managed to make it to finals day. The team is still struggling to keep up with the elite pace in this youthful expressive sport. But freeskiing icon TJ Schiller says events like this will help galvanize the next generation of Austrian freeskiers:

“I think it is amazing for the local scene to have the World Cup here,” he said. “It’s great for young up and coming kids to be able to see their heroes and heroines riding. And then, at the Stubai Zoo, they can train on the same course and jump over the same kickers and train on the same rails. It’s great for the sport.