All Photos: Courtesy of the Winter Video games NZ | Skier: Eileen Gu
After celebrating her twenty first birthday on September third, Eileen Gu obtained an unimaginable (and hard-earned) reward a couple of days later. Gu took first place within the FIS Ladies’s Halfpipe World Cup occasion throughout the Winter Video games New Zealand. This was her fifteenth World Cup win, setting a brand new report and cementing Gu because the winningest skier is FIS Freeski World Cup historical past.
Friday’s qualifying lower left solely eight ladies within the subject, every battling for glory in Cardrona’s 22-foot Olympic halfpipe. The proficient shapers of the Cardrona Park Crew put within the work to create a colossal freestyle course for the Winter Video games NZ, and this immaculate halfpipe was the cherry on high. However should you had been on the bottom at Cardrona final weekend, you wouldn’t have been in a position to make out most of the options, or riders for that matter. Tumultuous winds and snow battered New Zealand’s South Island obscuring the imaginative and prescient of the halfpipe finalists and spectators.
With poise and dedication, Gu laid down three unimaginable first-place runs. Her competitors expertise was finally a deciding issue, as she demonstrated endurance and precision relating to her trick choice in such variable climate. Many athletes battle in these situations, as some push themselves too exhausting given points with visibility and wind, and others play it too conservatively. Nonetheless, this was not the case for Gu.
Eileen Gu laid down three near-flawless runs within the Ladies’s FIS World Cup Halfpipe Finals in Cardrona, NZ
She began her run with an enormous right-side 900, scoring a 92.00 on her first outing. She raised the bar on her subsequent run, gaining much more amplitude out of the pipe and dialing in her execution to enhance her rating to 94.50. By the point her third run got here round, she had already secured the win, as no different opponents would be capable to high her rating. Nonetheless, this didn’t cease her from pulling out all of the stops for a surreal victory lap.
Her third run included a right-side cork 9 Buick seize, left-side cork 9 Japan, right-side 7 lead tail, swap left 7 Japan and left alley-oop flat spin 540 mute seize. For all this and extra, she was awarded a rating of 96.00 by the judges, who justified the excessive rating by noting her, “good amplitude, number of tips, persistently good grabs and spinning tips in 4 totally different instructions,” in keeping with the Winter Video games NZ official press launch. To place her unimaginable efficiency into perspective, no different skier within the Ladies’s Halfpipe subject was in a position to obtain a rating above 90.00 all through the finals.
“The climate and the situations didn’t make it straightforward at present nevertheless it’s a testomony to my love of snowboarding. Each new contest feels novel and thrilling, there’s no complacency right here, my purpose is to proceed pushing myself, pushing the game, pushing ladies’s snowboarding. Seeing that report being damaged at present for women and men means a ton to me and it’s one thing I’ll carry with me and I hope to proceed breaking information sooner or later.” – Eileen Gu
The battle for second place was a fierce match between China’s Zhang Kexin and Canada’s Rachael Karker. Zhang held the upper rating after the primary run with 85.25 whereas Karker sat simply behind on 83.25. With Zhang unable to enhance her rating on run two, the Canadian leapfrogged forward of her with 87 factors however Zhang was in a position to reply with a rating of 89.25 on her last run. The judges rewarded her for good trick selection and execution with the silver medal.
Karker didn’t enhance on her second run rating however was in a position to beat out the one American within the finals, Svea Irving, and end the day in third place. With difficult situations and fierce competitors throughout, it’s definitely too early to depend out any of the latter finishers as we kick off the competitors season. Kelly Sildaru, Zoe Atkin and Svea Irving are definitely price keeping track of as we head into the autumn and early winter.
This win, whereas certainly one of many for Gu, was particular. Not solely did it cement her because the winningest skier in FIS Freeski World Cup historical past, however the location was a sentimental one. Her fifteenth World Cup win occurred proper the place she earned her first World Cup podium in 2019.
“It’s a full circle second,” says Gu. “My fifteenth World Cup win again on the location of my first World Cup podium 5 years in the past. It means a lot. I feel for me, snowboarding is all the time about pushing the following degree so I used to be pleased with the 92 on run one however I wished to push it to 94 after which I wished to push to 96. Each contest is a brand new problem so having that resilience mentally and bodily to compete and put it down when it counts… [that] retains it enjoyable and thrilling. It’s what I like about snowboarding.”
Gu has rapidly develop into one of the prolific opponents within the historical past of the game. She was the primary girl to ever land a ahead double cork 1440, doing so at simply 18 years outdated. She’s additionally the youngest freeski Olympic champion to medal in all three main disciplines, taking house gold in halfpipe and massive air, and silver in slopestyle throughout the 2022 Winter Olympics. That is much more astonishing when you think about the present caliber of competitors in ladies’s freestyle snowboarding. She has been in a position to carry out on the high of her class in a number of disciplines for a number of seasons, regardless of different skiers acting at an extremely excessive degree.
Because the FIS Freeski World Cup circuit kicks off the 2024/25 season, we’re excited to see how far Gu pushes her legacy. She’s executed so much to convey snowboarding into the limelight, being one of many few riders to ever efficiently steadiness mainstream tradition with freeski excellence. She carries the identical relentless work ethic off the snow too, learning quantum physics at Stanford College, and creating a profession as a world vogue mannequin. We’ll make sure you replace you because the competitors season rolls on, and as Gu, a seemingly unstoppable juggernaut, appears to be like to say extra victories all through the season.
