A light dusting of snow as the clouds rolled in at Copper this afternoon. There were a few issues on the course with speed as there had been through the weekend, and the wind was making things a little unpredictable for the ladies, who sent it regardless. There were a couple of heavy crashes and Kelly Sildaru opted not to compete at all, though she is nursing a broken hand right now too. Huge respect to the ladies who sent it hard in those conditions, I can tell you we wouldn't be skiing jumps in that wind.
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Run 1:
The comp really came to life with an insane dub flatspin out of nowhere (after b2b 360s no less) from Jay Riccomini on the bottom hit of this course, banger. Most of the ladies were feeling out the course on run one, so the opening round was a bit of a battle of the safety runs. Sarah Hoefflin got some serious tweakage on her grab, particularly the opening right 5, which she followed up with back-to-back switch cork 7s. Tess Ledeux had the most technical run of the field and took the early lead courtesy of a rail line, including the sw2 gap out to pretzel 2 that Alex Hall was throwing in the men's event earlier and two nines at the bottom. NS Awards Comp MVP nominee Marin Hamill was charging the course with style as always but perhaps slight
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Run 2:
It took until the second run for Johanne Killi to put a run down, but it was a good'n, bumping her right up to provisional third. She has such a clean style, it's always good to watch. Giulia Tanno put down a sick rail run with a front swap to switch across the cannon to down transfer to switch 2 pretz 2 on the gap to down. Kirstie Muir had some grab issues on both her first two runs but was just a fingertip away from a podium run, because her rails and jumps were both bangers. Mathilde Gremaud crushed the rails on both her first two runs too, but couldn't quite keep her speed on the jumps. Eileen Gu sorted out her grab issue from run one and she's just so solid on her tricks, especially the rails(sw2 p4, kfed, 2 on) but her jumps were not quite enough to bump Tess Ledeux out of the top spot. Sarah managed to add the switch 10 to her bottom run, scraping it around at the last possible second but the judges didn't love that extra flavor.
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Run 3:
Jay Riccomini definitely wins the sender of the day award, with a backseat 7 (almost washout) right in to dub flat 7 on the bottom jumps... having crashed super hard on the dub 7 the previous. Totally unnecessary comeback dub for the win. Tess Ledeux, already in the lead, sent her dub 12 on her final hit of the day but crashed. She was so close too, huge props for the send in the shitty conditions. Marin Hamill charged the course with style and power and normal but she was lacking on the technicality, unfortunately. Eileen Gu looked a threat to the lead all day and she had great rails on all three runs but couldn't keep her jumps totally clean as speed caught her out all three runs. Sarah Hoefflin cleaned up her switch right double wobble 10 on the bottom jump, which was the biggest trick of the whole day. Grab was tweaked too but her rails were a little short of the other girls. Only sixth place looked harsh to us, and to Tom in the commentary booth too, but that's how it goes sometimes. Bella Bacon deserves a shoutout for sending a cork 10 at the bottom of the run too, and taking a heavy hit for her efforts.
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Results:
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Replay:
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