Cover photo: Buchholz/FIS

After a snowy, then avalanche-y practice and a nice break from comps for most of the athletes, the penultimate World Cup went down in Tignes, France this morning with a solid cast of riders in attendance. The Tignes slopestyle course was one of the more interesting of the season, mixing up jumps and rails in a fashion that recalled the old Tignes XGames setup. Two small jumps up top made for slightly less hucking, at least in some cases, and the three banks of rails in the middle were well-judged. The final jump was definitely a money booter, probably twice the size of the other jumps on the course and it made for exciting enders to all the runs. The course combined with good weather and snow conditions to make this one of the better slope comps of the season to watch. It's worth noting that the YouTube live stream was only hovering around ~43 concurrents during men's finals, which is not a great sign of a particularly healthy audience.

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Women:

Run 1:

Ruyi Yang is finding herself a finals regular these days and her skiing is coming together too and she's building runs to contend with. Sandra Eie also has growing slopestyle chops and Megan Oldham had a dope backslide back two in her run and somehow survived a slight tip catch on a rail transfer, but all three had grabs go wayward. Megan got away with it though, stomping a huge dub on the final jump and still took home a 90. Sarah Hoefflin also survived death with a dreaded switch takeoff tip catch to superman on the second jump. Ruby Andrews and Mathilde Gremaud bobbled their runs, although Mathilde's dub 10 on the final hit was enough to put her provisional second with an 80 despite two earlier errors. Johanne Killi then raised the bar A LOT with a dope style run, switch left 7 safety, switch right 7 japan, switch right tails two to forward, k-fed on the dfd, 270 to forward on the gap to tube (shifty out) and then capped left cork 9 blunt. All perfection all steezy, 95 points and it was cool to see the judges seemingly reward style. Tess Ledeux was on a mission, switch left 7 japan, switch right dub wobble 9 safety a sick backslide to switch... but she crashed on her final hit dub.

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Run 2:

Meghan Oldham was a tiny over-rotation from a podium-challenging score, slightly overcooking a final hit dub 12 and reverting. Giulia Tanno slightly improved on her first run but it was just all a bit sketchy on the day. Sarah Hoefflin was on for a potentially podium too, barring a couple of small bobbles, her score would have been higher because all the elements of the run were there. It was enough for 84.25 but a hand touch on the switch dub 10 mute and opening up on the switch 2 disaster were probably the guilty parties score-wise. Mathilde cleaned up her run, greasing the switch two to forward and stomping her kfed with authority. Dub 10 on the final hit was way cleaner too and she took the lead with a massive 96.25, bumping Sarah down to fourth. Johanne Killi's kfed went missing, leaving her second and waiting for Tess to drop to see what colour her medal would be. Tess put down by far the most technical run of the day. Switch left 7 japan, switch right cork 9, backslide safety to switch, switch right 2 p 2 (landed sideways), switch left 2 continuing 2, left dub 12 mute stomped... but the sideways landing killed her score and kept her just fifth.

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Results:

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Men:

Run 1:

Cody LaPlante put down a banger of an opening run, dripping style on the switch 4 to forward, dub 12 poke and put down a greasy dub 10 pretzel on the final jump. Sebastian Scherve did a lot of spinny shit, including his trademark dub bio 14 mute on the final jump. It wasn't particularly nice to watch contrasted with Cody, but it was technical as fuck and did score him 6 points more. Max Moffat had his poles back, and stomped a clean run with some nice tweaks and a switch cork 450 safety on the gap to down tube, unfortunately, the grab was a little short on his final hit switch dub 14. Tyler Harding had a lucky escape with a ski release on the takeoff of the final jump but his run was looking promising, as was Christian Nummedal's despite slight bobbles. Honestly at this point the runs started to blur into one. I'm not sure why we still have 16 male finalists vs 10 women, just make it 12 x 12 already, it will seriously improve both events. Jesper brought some definite interest to proceedings, opening his run with a left dub misty 9 (kinda bringback from 10 style), then a switch blender dub 14 and also put down an 810 on continuing two. He scored a deserved 94 too, taking a big lead. Someone get that guy off Dope and onto literally any other brand quick. Birk Ruud put down a technical masterclass on both the jumps and the rails but the run had literally zero points of interest. He took the lead with 96.0 and with the judging criteria, it was pretty undeniable. But watch the two runs back to back if you can find them and you can see everything that is 'wrong' with comps, at least from a FREEstyle perspective, in a nutshell. Andri stomped a banger run too featuring THE smallest poles I've ever seen but at least he had some. He only took provisional third, for his efforts but I couldn't tell you why without rewatching both him and Birk multiple times, because I thought Andri had the edge this time (Jesper was just totally different).

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Run 2:

Cody LaPlante did a loose but lit cork 1 on the final hit after missing his first rail. Sebastian Scherve did basically the same run again but scored 3 points lower. To his credit the back 3swap transfer p2 was pretty crazy. Konnor Ralph had a cool 4 on continuing 4 on the gap to rail, Oliwer Magnusson had 3 450 variations on the rails and his style is definitely aging like fine wine. Tyler Harding lost it on the second rail but was steezing otherwise. Christian Nummedal is slowly turning into the unlikely hero of comp skiing, steezing through his run, going big and grabbing clean. The front swap transfer continuing back 4 was sick too, whipping round the blind 4. He ended up somewhere in the middle of the pack but it was a dope run. Thibault Magnin was squeaky clean himself, and the stalled rotation on the second hit switch dub 10 was a nice touch. Enough for provisional 5th. Fabian Boesch put down a 1980 on the final jump, but he can do whatever he likes and he'll never make a podium. Far from my favorite skier to watch but I don't always understand his scoring, that's for sure. Birk did back to back 4p4s which is honestly pretty wild but missed a grab up top. Andri could only improve his first run by half a point leaving Birk with another W.

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Results: