Deer Valley WC Report
The latest round of the aerials World Cup took us to Deer Valley, Utah (USA) with afternoon qualifications followed by night finals taking place before a huge enthusiastic crowd. The entire event was broadcast live online by Urtur.
Tim Lever was flying the flag for Great Britain, with his first experience of competing on the World Cup stage. Read about his adventure here.
Right from the off, it proved to be a highly competitive event, with a few surprises thrown in for good measure. In the women’s event, Lydia Lassila (AUS) who was highly fancied to challenge for the win, blew the landing in qualification and was lucky to scrape into the finals in 12th place. In the first round of finals, she again just managed to hang in there with 8th place, which is where she eventually finished after failing to advance to the Super Final. The Aussies were well represented with Laura Peel and Danielle Scott battling against the Chinese skiers Xu Mengtao and Zhang Xin for the top honours. Xu Mengtao (CHN) was not to be denied and cruised to her fifth straight win of the season with a superlative display that would have given her a podium spot and second place in the men’s competition. She totally outclassed her rivals leaving them trailing in her wake by nearly 40 points as she performed an extra flip and and one more twist than any of her peers.
If that wasn’t enough, the men’s event then ripped up the form book and threw it away. It was no surprise to see two Chinese athletes at the top of the pile in Qualification with World Cup leader Jia Zongyang ahead of Qi Guangpu, both closely followed by the Belorussian veterans Alexi Grishin and Dmitri Dashinski. Canada were almost denied entry to the finals, but Travis Gerrits kept his nerve and held on to 11th place. Surprise of the Qualifications, was David Morris (AUS) who has proved to be the one to watch of the season so far; the judges deemed him only good enough for 15th place and he was off for an early bath! An unjust decision in my opinion as I had him easily making the top five. Perhaps using only five judges to mark overall scores is not working as well as had been hoped. See what you think…
Final’s got underway and the surprises continued, with Dashinski withdrawing from the event, and a chink finally showing in the Chinese armour. Most unexpected was the leader at the end of Final 1… Oleksandr Abramenko (UKR) threw down the gauntlet and pushed Jia Zhongyang down into second place as Guangpu Qi (CHN) ended up in 9th and out of the running. Final 2 proved too much for Abramenko and he slipped out of contention allowing another newcomer, former World Junior Champion, Maxim Gustik (BLR) to take the lead with Travis Gerrits (CAN), Jia Zhongyang (CHN) and rookie Michael Rossi (USA) progressing to the Super Final.
Zhongyang was the only athlete to have another big gun jump left in his armoury, but stunned the crowd when he failed to land it. Crash landings are not normally in his repertoire and with the other athletes nailing their jumps, it meant for the first time this season, there was no place on the men’s podium for the Chinese.
Michael Rossi was stoked to get his first podium in third place, Travis Gerrits was pleased to be back on the podium in second and we saw Maxim Gustik take his first ever win. What a night!
Photo Courtesy of FIS Freestyle
Result Sheet Links
Deer Valley Men’s Qualification 2013-02-01
Deer Valley Men’s Full Results 2013-02-01
Deer Valley Women’s Qualification 2013-02-01
Deer Valley Women’s Full Results 2013-02-01