It was a weird day today, with sun and blue skies all morning, but snow descending on the slopestyle course in Laax just for finals. It was, not to put a fine point on it, fucking freezing too, so conditions were tricky, to say the least. The course in Laax offered a unique final feature and overall, a slopestyle setup with more options than most. It was sick to see the riders taking full advantage of that, with unique rail options offering a bigger variety of rail tricks than we normally see. It was truly a pity about the weather because the setup offered the chance for a truly mind-blowing World Cup.

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Men:

Run 1:

Christian Nummedal was the first to drop and his partial run was an omen of things to come. He was launched into the course by the Norwegian coaches but still came up short on a gap 450, then got lost in the air on the second jump. Valentin Morel put down a full run but only threw a switch left bio 9, a definite safety trick these days, on the final jump due to the slow conditions which killed his score. That boy is the definition of style though. Cody Laplante put one down too but again, it was fairly safe. Max Moffat only just had enough speed to squeak around his switch dub 12 true nose and his grabs were a bit wayward but the 270 on to forward to nosebutter 9 on the final rail to butter pad feature was sick. Alex Hall was the first guy to truly put down a clean run, with a swap transfer 2 out, and a dope nosebutter out on the rails, and a switch 4 tokyo drift, continuing cork 450 on the butter pad. Birk Ruud is a madman, two 16s and they came around so easily despite the dodgy speed. His nosebutter 6 on to the first rail was slightly wayward and it wasn't quite enough to bump AHall from the lead. Andri Ragettli did though, his switch dub misty 12 double mute was sick, and switch 270 on to the rail to opposite switch 720 off the pad. Then came Matej. It wasn't perfect but it had to be one of the most creative slopestyle runs of the last decade. 180 switch 5050 180 out, back 6 double butter swerve out of the second rail, tokyo drift pretzel underflip(?) on the butterpad. I'm honestly not really sure how to call most of the tricks live, but damn. He did miss the grab on a dub 12 mute which killed his score though.

Run 2:

The weather remained inconsistent for run two with speed still an issue. Christian Nummedal, Valentin Morel, Cody Laplante all had major issues or crashes. Fabian Boesch squeaked around a switch dub 10 but did put a full run down. Colby didn't quite have the speed for his nosebud dub 16 either, though the switch 270 backslide cont. cork 450 was dope. The weather got so bad that Max Moffat had to wait at the start for a few minutes for both snow and wind to settle but the speed wasn't there regardless. Birk Ruud actually brought it back a notch, only throwing the switch dub 12, but the nosebutter 6 on was cleaner. Not enough for the lead, and neither was Matej's run, even though it was a big improvement in terms of execution. He did only do the single switch pretzel and came kinda up short (full run below), so that is likely why. 4th for him and a home win for Andrej Ragettli.

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Results:

*The Women's finals were canceled due to the conditions. We believe that will mean semi-final results are carried forward leaving the results:

1) Johanne Killi

2) Sarah Hoefflin

3) Tess Ledeux

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https://www.newschoolers.com/videos/watch/1061897/MatejRunNS-mov

Matej's Run: Podium videos will be on FIS Youtube