Snow has been something of an issue at this year’s Dew Tour and while today’s event went down under blue skies, the 3ft of snow Copper Mountain has seen in the last couple of days meant a soft course. That combined with the wind to mean there were definite speed problems for quite a few of the guys, something they were all discussing in the athlete lounge after this morning’s practice. More than one rider hadn’t tried any tricks on the jumps at all during that session. With qualifying cancelled, all 16 athletes competed in a two-run final.

Antoine Adelisse dropped first and guinea pigged the course, straight airing all three jumps. He did easily clear all three though and that gave the following riders the all-clear to send. Christian Nummedal set the early bar stomping a dub 14 on the bottom jump, before Colby Stevenson blew everyone away with a 3swap transfer for which he had to direct a cameraman out of the way, and a crazy dub 16 cuban on the final jump. Oystein Braten crushed the rails and even threw a beautiful Sammy C poked dub 10 down the bottom, one of the first run highlights despite a bobble on jump one. Last to drop, Evan McEachran, the reigning Dew Tour champ put down a solid run to go provisional third after the first round.

At the second time of asking, Antoine Adelisse stomped an insane jump run, getting retribution for that first run short straw. He seemed stunned to end up with a lowly 81.00. He had a slightly loose rail hit but that seemed really low to us too. Christian Nummedal lifted the roof on the scores with a squeaky clean run, improving on all his features. His 94 set a high target for the following 14 riders, and it came despite a k-fed in the run, who knew. The speed in the second run seemed way better for everyone and made for a good show as the two-run limit put the pressure on everyone. Max Moffat stomped a tasty back swap to backslide to switch and an insane switch dub 10 dub true nose. He didn’t get a great score, but it looked dope. I guess that’s why he was up for the coolest comp jock award at NS awards last night.

Fabian Bösch kept things interesting with a variety of rail tricks, including one footers, pretzels and a front flip off the butter pad, and solid, technical jumps but it was only enough for provisional 5th. Ferdi had a crazy dub 14 (opp japan?) but bobbled on a couple of technical rail tricks which kept him in the middle of the pack. Yet again, he had one of the most interesting runs of the day though. Nick Goepper joined Fabian Bösch and Antoine in the ‘that seemed low’ score bracket, as potentially did ABM immediately afterwards. He certainly wasn’t happy. Alex Hall stomped his run having had an uncharacteristic fall on a switch two pretzel two on run one. He did miss a tap on his cannon trick but it was good enough for provisional second place nonetheless. Last to drop, Evan McEachran was smooth as butter through the whole course, and the only guy to utilize the rail to QP feature up top. His run was only good enough for fourth in the eyes of the judges, but it was a cool run. His failure to make the top three left us with probably the tallest slopestyle podium of all time. Check out the highlights below and watch the full show on Youtube too.

Podium:

3rd Place - Andri Ragettli

https://www.newschoolers.com/videos/watch/954272/andri-2-mp4

2nd Place - Alex Hall

https://www.newschoolers.com/videos/watch/954274/ahall-2-mp4

1st Place - Christian Nummedal

https://www.newschoolers.com/videos/watch/954275/nummedal-2-mp4