Words & photos by Dan Carr

Every August an increasing proportion of the skiing community makes the migration south of the Equator to Wanaka, New Zealand. With so many of the top pros in town, the competition scene here has been heating up over the last couple of years and the word about town was that this year's New Zealand Freeski Open could very well play host to the most impressive slopestyle competition ever witnessed. The vibe amongst the competitors was unique, everybody was stoked to be skiing with each other again, and stoked on the course that Cardona had laid down for them.

Starting off with a couple of flat-down rails, into a pair of parallel up rails, followed by three jumps of increasing size; it wasn't the longest course but it was beautifully prepared.

The women's competition went down first on day ine and Dania Assaly took home first with a solid run ending with a 900 on the money booter at the bottom of the course. This years X Games slope winner, Anna Segal, came in second with her 180, switch 5 and flat 3 combo on the bottom three jumps. Third place went to Eva-Maria Patscheider from Austria who added the podium finish to her third place at this year's European Open.

Women's Results

1) Dania Assally - 89.4
2) Anna Segal - 85.8
3) Eva-Maria Patscheider - 82.8
4) Chiho Takao - 63.0
5) Arianna Tricomi - 56.6
6) Shuri Terada - 51.6
7) Sofie Windstedt - 17.6
8) Julie Benard - 17.4

Twelve riders were pre-qualified for the men's finals but a further eight would need to be selected from the 51 strong field in the qualifiers. Unfortunately the weather had other plans though and notorious "Cardrona fog" came in quick and thick. All 50 riders successfully completed their first runs but following this the judges had a tough time seeing the whole course.

Riders and judges persevered with the conditions, sending someone every time a gap in the clouds appeared. At the end of the day though, not every rider managed to complete both qualifying runs so the decision was made to bump the finals to the next day and to give all riders a rebate on their second qualifying run the next morning.

Wanaka woke to a cloudless sky the next morning and the delay to the finals had only served to heighten people's expectations. When training began in the morning it was obvious that the crowd wouldn't be disappointed as a continuous train of double variations was sent over the final jump. Today, spinning both ways and throwing a dub was not going to guarantee you anything. In fact, 19 of the 22 finalists threw some sort of double variation on the final jump and only a couple of guys were not ambidextrously spinning in every direction. A little time away from the competition scene seemed to have done the world of good and it was great to see everyone having such a good time in a relaxed atmosphere.

When the scores were tallied up Bobby Brown came out on top closely followed by Wallish who put down an almost identical run apart from the top rail feature. Bobby went with the switch 450 disaster and Wallish went for the blind swap, pretzl. The top 3 all finished off their runs with perfect double cork 12's.

This really was one of the most impressive displays yet seen by the freeskiing community. "The slopestyle course was awesome. I loved it," said Brown. "It was the best competition I've been in for a long time, the event had a great feel to it." The evolution of slopestyle skiing continues then and whilst the podium finishers all used the double cork 12 as their weapon, it was also good to see some innovation amongst other riders, throwing in new grabs or even entirely new axis' into their doubles. Elias Ambuhl and Matt Margetts in particular brought something different to the final jump in the line. And a quick shout needs to go out to Matt Phillipi and Andri Ambuhl. Both guys skied super hard but had nasty falls. Heal fast my friends.

Men's Results

1) Bobby Brown - 93.0
2) Tom Wallish - 90.0
3) Henrik Harlaut - 86.6
4) Matt Margetts - 83.0
5) Russ Henshaw - 81.0
6) Jossi Wells - 78.2
7) Per Christian Fosse - 75.4
8) AJ Kemppainen - 74.4
9) Elias Ambhl - 70.6
10) Mike Hornbeck - 67.4
11) Jaime Puigdengoles - 62.2
12) Ian Cosco - 55.0
13) Bene Mayr - 53.2
14) John Spriggs - 50.8
15) Byron Wells - 49.4
16) Matt Soundy - 45.4
17) Andri Ambhl - 39.2
18) Gus Kenworthy - 25.0
19) Leigh Powis - 22.0
20) Kentaro Tsuda - 15.0