Indra Brown and Nick Goepper win on a freezing day in Calgary

The Women

Having fallen victim to the tricky conditions in the first run, Svea Irving was able to stomp her run on the second time of asking. Her switch cork 720 safety is a unique point of difference in her run but it was just not enough to overtake Kexin Zhang’s first run effort. Kexin’s multiple and back-to-back switch spinning gives her the edge in terms of difficulty and progression when compared to Svea.

Her compatriot Fanghui Li put down both ways switch 720, showing a good level of difficulty and progression in the weakened field of riders with Eileen Gu and Zoe Atkin missing from the startlist. However, sketches throughout the run would keep her off another World Cup podium.

Showing the sort of consistency you might expect from a seasoned veteran, the 15 year-old Indra Brown put down her first run to take an early and insurmountable lead. This was only her third ever World Cup start, having finished in third and second place in the previous two events of the season. 

Indra started her run off with back-to-back 900s, fitting in two back-to-back switch hits further down the pipe. She did lose some amplitude as the run went on, but on a day with small mistakes and missed grabs from her competitors it was enough to take her first win. The future is extremely bright for Indra, who already has the tricks and the consistency to compete at the highest level.

The Men

The competition amongst the men for places on national teams, specifically the USA team, is reaching its intense climax. With so many of the best halfpipe skiers being from the US and such limited spaces, the race is well and truly on. Alex Ferreira was the only rider with a guaranteed spot before this contest and therefore sat out this weekend.

The combination of many riders going for broke and the extremely challenging conditions meant that there was not a high percentage of clean runs: Bindings were broken, copings were smashed, grabs were missed and edges were lost.

Birk Irving made it a family double podium by also landing himself in third place to match his younger sister Svea. It was a battle of experience versus youth though for the top spot, with young-gun Finley Melville Ives going head-to-head with veteran Nick Goepper. 

Considering the majority of the field fell on the first run, the win looked assured when Finley put down a run way beyond the difficulty of anything attempted by the rest of the field. While others were struggling with safety runs, including 720s and 540s, Finley was throwing double cork 1620 into the middle of his run. The win looked assured as the second runs were filled with as many near death experiences as the first goes.

That was until Nick laced the run that had been bringing him so much success last year. A switch left double cork 1080 japan, into a right double cork 1260 mute, which he mirrored immediately to the left, then linked a right double cork 1080 safety to his signature switch right alley-oop bone roll tail. He punched the air as he skied out the bottom, presumably with a mixture of excitement and relief having had a difficult start to the year results wise. 

Nick would have a long and nervous wait in the finish area as the likes of Hunter Hess, Matthew Labaugh, Tristan Feinberg all tried in vain to unseat him. However, last year’s winner at the Snow Rodeo in Calgary, Finley was the only real rider left with the firepower to reclaim the top spot. It was not to be, however, as Finley threw everything he had at each wall with small mistakes compounding into a DNI score from the judges.

Nick’s second win in the discipline makes him the oldest ever halfpipe World Cup winner, and has secured him his spot on the US team travelling to Milan-Cortina next month. 

“It feels amazing. I really needed this one to qualify for the Olympics for the USA team. And I got the best pants award,” the stars and stripes clad Goepper said after the final.

The final World Cup Halfpipe before the Olympic games will take place next week in Aspen—leaving the final fight for places to go right down to the wire.