Justine Dufour-Lapointe and Ben Richards top the FWT podiums in Spain

The conditions at Baqueira Beret’s Tuc de Bacivèr were better than expected. The recent snowfall had settled well and strong winds had compacted the snow in the 424 m tall northwest facing slope riddled with plenty of little ridges and spines. Competitors had plenty of options for launching airs in the middle of the face, tight chutes required good technical skiing and a roomy, gentle run-out invited skiers to go full throttle. Snow conditions were still challenging due to the wind effected surface and many rocks and bushes, which would be covered in a normal winter, were still sticking out, but at least competitors didn’t have any difficulties with sharks hiding in the snow.

In the Ski Women’s field, quite a few competitors had nevertheless trouble with the snow cover. Be it that they got stuck at a landing right away, be it that they had problems shutting their speed down following a landing in tricky terrain or simply that they got lost between the plenty of rocks in their line choice. As a consequence, only about half of the skiers brought down a clean run—among them mostly rookies, who might have taken a slightly less ambitious approach in their very first World Tour competition compared to the established athletes. The unlucky skier of the day was Molly Armanino, who used her strong technique to nicely ski a cliffed-out couloir that saw very little traffic throughout the day, only to misjudge a windlip take-off at the bottom of the venue and land on her back.

Hence, it was a competition clearly dominated by last year’s FWT champion Justine Dufour-Lapointe. The Canadian skied fast and precise through the steep central gullies and added a backflip over a spine right in the middle of the steepest part of the face. Justine had about five meters following her landing to control her speed and chip in the next turn, but no problem for her—other than for Astrid Cheylus who crashed into the wall on a similar try. The distance of 10 points between Justine and the rest of the field was rather too little than too big and it was great to see how obviously happy such an experienced skier was about her run. Second place went to French rookie Zoé Delzoppo, only 20 years old, who skied fast and controlled including some sizable straight airs—definitely a strong effort but still an approach that might not be enough for the podium on another day. Third place went to fellow Frenchwomen Lou Barin, a former freestyle competitor and also a tour rookie, profiting from a 360 at the top of the venue.

Contrary to the Women, it was a very tight call in the Ski Men’s category. The contest took off with a bang as the first two starters were Marcus Goguen, reigning FWT champion, and Max Hitzig, Marcus’ predecessor who missed last season due to injury. Marcus set the tone for this season once again with a very fluid run right through the steep middle couloirs, throwing a total of three 360s on the way—all spun the same direction—and a big straight air over the final rock band flying out into the open slope. However, other than what we were used to from Marcus last season, his tricks weren’t that clean and also his landings weren’t perfect. He got a score in the 80s but clearly, there was room for improvement. That was quickly delivered by Max Hitzig, who is unquestionably back to form. He skied a slightly different route in the same area of the venue, starting with a huge backflip high up in the chutes—nicely landed—and following up with a big 360. There, Max landed heavily in the backseat and just managed to recover before flying over the same last drop as Marcus, now back in control. A slightly bolder approach thanks to bigger airs, but arguably also with a slightly bigger problem. Nevertheless, Max got a higher score than Marcus. Then, as third starter, WeiTien Ho followed immediately, last year’s Xtreme Verbier winner. (You can read a long-format interview with WeiTien to find out how he ticks at contests in our current Downdays book.) He basically skied the same line as fellow Whistler Freeride Club skier Marcus Goguen, but with two totally clean 360s and a big, immaculately stomped backflip to top things off. This put the Canadian at the top of the ranking and the question was whether anyone would be able to shake up the results following these three heavy-hitters.

The quick answer is yes, but it took a while to happen during the competition. Ross Tester, last year’s winner in Spain, came close but had to settle behind Max Hitzig, closely edging out Marcus Goguen. Then Ben Richards set out for a new high score about half way down the starting order. The style icon from New Zealand closely followed Max Hitzig’s line but he took a slightly different approach to the first big cliff which directed him to a better, slightly higher landing. Ben tricked that cliff with a classic Lincoln Loop, a nice variety in today’s competition circuit. He then followed up with an even loftier 360 than Max and landed perfectly. The rest was effortless high speed cruising to the finish including a final long straight air over the standard cliff bar. It was a similarly precise and stylish performance as WeiTien with one trick less, but arguably the bigger airs. It resulted in a slight lead for Ben with a score of 86.67 over WeiTien’s 86.33. This standing lasted to the second to last competitor, Toby Rafford from Sun Valley, Idaho. He traversed out on the ridge to the very far skier’s left, a section of the venue that only Aymar Navarro, the Spanish freeride legend, had tackled before in a famed outing at one of the previous FWT stops in Baqueira Beret. Toby entered this section past a big cornice into a super steep mixture of rock and snow that resulted in a mandatory triple cliff drop. He managed this feat perfectly, controlled his speed, threw in another air and sent the big mandatory cliff at the bottom of his line with a huge floating 360. On impact, Toby dug deep into the snow, had his skis sideways for a short moment, clearly touched the snow with more than his skies but regained control super quickly and skied out to the finish line unfazed. The crowd was raging on excitement and the judges went thinking of what to do with this performance for what seemed an eternity. At the end they slid Toby right inbetween Ben and WeiTien into second place although there was almost no room left. What a culmination of an already exciting competition.

Reviewing the Baqueira Beret Pro by Movistar, there are two talking points other than the fact that the Freeride World Tour by Peak Performance continues to offer an amazing show. The first one is, should the sport eventually be renamed into Big Mountain Freestyle? There were two pretty decent runs in the Ski Men’s that missed the high energetic trick in the middle of their lines—simply because there was no option for such an outing in those lines—but that showed some other aspects of classic freeriding to a very high standard. Swedish veteran Kristofer Turdell skied the same close-out couloir as Molly Armanino, and he did so as fluently as it gets in such tight, steep, rocky terrain—he even threw in a sweet backflip at the bottom windlip that took Molly out. This effort turned out to be good enough for twelfth place. That was at least one spot better than Swiss rookie Paul de Pourtalès, who skied a line very far on the skier’s right side with undoubtedly the biggest cliff drop of the day. Paul stomped this huge drop perfectly and even added a few nice straight airs on his traversing way through some of the most wind-affected snow of the venue. Granted, the feat of sticking a big trick in the middle of a complex line is outstanding, particularly from an athletic standpoint, but to see that these more traditional aspects of freeriding—particularly the creative approach to line choice exhibited by those two riders—was so poorly rewarded by the judges makes me a bit sad.

The elephant in the room is the score of Toby Rafford, though. Of course, I loved his approach and his skiing blew my mind, but he still touched down in the snow upon landing his final jump—and it wasn’t just a slight touch as he clearly had his skis sideways for a moment which means that all his body weight wasn’t on his skis that moment since otherwise he would have simply crashed. It was the result of very slightly over-rotating his 360 combined with the huge impact of his jump. So to put Toby in second place, just in-between two almost perfectly executed, super solid and bold runs that were almost indistinguishable according to their scores, obviously raises a few questions. For example, what would Toby’s score have been had he landed his 360 perfectly? Riders, who had similar problems with one landing for runs that would have been worth a score in the 70s, came out in the 50s. Based on that parallel, Toby’s score would have eventually surpassed the maximum of 100. Then, to put Toby into third behind the two nearly perfect runs and in front of Max Hitzig, who had some problems in his run too, would have made more sense—or even putting him into first place based on this truly outstanding approach and simply disregarding his problems for once, would have made more sense than putting him into second. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for seeing more of that type of unique approach in freeride competitions and therefore personally welcome that Toby got rewarded. But the judges unquestionably opened the door for a lot of discussions that might come up quite regularly this season, simply by reference to the judging standards set in Baqueira Beret.