World Cup Big Air Season Continues in Beijing

The first Big Air contest of the season in Chur had more butter than a Lurpak factory with Matej Svancer coming out on top with back-to-back nose and tail butter triple corks. Butters were being heavily rewarded with five out of the top six finishers getting hooked up for this style of take-off. In contrast, bringback tricks were not so in favour, the judges punishing any slight execution errors.]

The judges have been discussing the nuances of butters – specifically that their difficulty lies in their execution – and are going to be paying close attention to whether the skier is truly buttering off the lip, not simply pre-rotating. Elias Syrja is a good example of this – when he butters the ski flexes and snaps off the lip, rather than washing off. As if the judges didn’t already have their work cut out assessing spins of up to 2160, now they must also focus on the fastest, hardest part of the trick to see – the take off.

In Chur big spinning triples won on the night, but the smaller rotations were not far behind. Elias bagged 4th place with a switch tail butter cork 360 and a nose butter bio 1260 – small rotations compared to the rest of the field. He only missed out on the top scores because of a lack of amplitude on both tricks – possibly the paradox of properly executing the butters.

One year ago, the industrial cooling towers of Beijing formed the backdrop for the battle of diverging factions in the sport: big spins versus bringback rotations versus whatever Matej and Elias were doing. On that day Matej’s Baron flip scored equal highest alongside Andri Ragettli’s switch double bio 1800 – closely followed by Alex Hall’s double cork 900 bringback. Three differing visions of skiing all being directly compared to one another.

One year on the battle lines have become more defined but no less complicated. It will be interesting to see how the judges decide to rank these differing approaches and where the contest will be won or lost.

The start list for Beijing sees some notable additions to the roster with the return of Birk Rudd and Mac Forehand, who will both be looking to stamp their mark on this season’s Big Air tour. The Norwegian, Tormod Frostad, has been on a tear up so far this season with two podiums out of two in Chur and Stubai and will be hoping to continue his form. Can Matej go back-to-back and silence any doubters who were brave enough to claim that he was dropping off the pace?

Women’s

Last year’s winner in Beijing, Mathilde Grimaud, continued her Big Air dominance into this season by comfortably winning in Chur. Her carved double cork 1260 and switch double cork 1080 combo proved once again to be too strong for the rest of the field. 

Tess Ledeux, arguably the only other competitor with a bag of tricks deep enough to challenge Mathilde, failed to land two clean tricks in Chur. Tess, however, should be full of confidence after a win in difficult conditions on the Stubai Glacier and has fond memories of this jump, taking home silver there in the 2022 Olympics. 

Hopefully plenty of good training days and a perfect jump will result in an exciting contest with riders such as Anni Karava and Flora Tabanelli pushing for the top spots on the podium.

2024 Big Air Beijing Livestream Info

Qualification for Women and Men both start on Friday 29 November with the finals taking place two days later on Sunday 1 December.

We will upload any livestream information as and when it is available.