Skip to content

Cookies 🍪

This site uses cookies that need consent.

Learn more

Zur Powderguide-Startseite Zur Powderguide-Startseite
events

ContestHappening 1 | 2022

FWT News 2022

by Tobias Huber 02/28/2022
A little insight into the ContestHappening of 2022 will also be provided this year on PowderGuide. The first part of the Freeride World Tour is already over. In a few weeks, you can look forward to an exciting finale including a new format.

There's a lot new at the Freeride World Tour (FWT) this season: new host region, (only) new venues and a new tour format. This year kicked off in Baqueira Beret, Spain, with the first FWT competition in Spain. It continued in the neighboring Ordino Arcalis in Andorra, which is now well known from the FWT. Finally, the whole tour circus flew to Canada to complete the first round of the FWT for this year in Kicking Horse after a year off due to Covid. If you want, you can check out the exact rankings and the replay here:

Spain

Andorra

Canada

These three tour stops had several things in common: the snow was rather poor, not really soft for at least half of the categories and the venues were new for all participants. This meant that despite the rather poor snow conditions and not too spectacular faces, there were still some interesting competitions. Unfortunately, this season was almost exclusively limited to the men's ski category. Of course, the performance density in the men's ski category is significantly higher than in all other categories and some snow conditions are easier to master on skis than on a snowboard.

In the other categories, the snow conditions hardly allowed for good performances. In addition, the format with only 3 stops before the cut hardly allows for any mistakes. While, for example, Marion Haerty, who has been clearly superior in the women's snowboarding category for years, is no longer competing due to a lack of motivation, it is almost to be feared that the winner of the tour will be the one who has fallen the least. This is not to criticize the performance of the participants. In this case, it just showed that 3 runs in rather hard and difficult conditions, which hardly allow any mistakes, are very little to convince judges, who also do not allow any mistakes.

Judging is always very subjective and not optimal. You can ask yourself whether you can and should judge freeride lines. But if you look at the judging on the Natural Selection Tour, for example, where more attention is paid to the overall impression than the perfect execution of each individual trick, you can at least hope that the way runs are judged can develop further. Who wants to see almost exclusively safety runs when the "competition" also and especially the ladies really push themselves?

Aymar Navarro regularly demonstrates the opposite of safety runs. The Spaniard was very lucky at his home event that nothing bad happened to him when he crashed in his unconventional straight line from the specially set up starting point. You can perhaps ride this line in suitable conditions, but you shouldn't let the pressure of the contest and spectators tempt you to take more risks than is appropriate for a freeride contest. Ultimately, if things go wrong, you're not only putting yourself at extreme risk, but also the contest freeriding itself.

After these three stops, there was quite a break (see ranking after 3 stops with cut in the gallery below). Well-known riders and winners did not make the cut and are now being replaced by a new generation. Snowboard FWT champ Victor De-Le-Rue is out, as is the "eternal" participant Reine Barkered, who lost out on the tour victory last season with a backslapper after a backflip. Above all, Max Palm is probably the best example of this new generation. The very talented Swede, who grew up in Les Arcs, comes from the generation that started freeride training (see Ski Racing) from an early age and is demonstrating the complete professionalization of the sport. Two double backflips in lines that have what it takes to win speak for themselves. Newcomer and two-time stop winner Maxime Chabloz is also a professional athlete as a former junior kitesurfing world champion. He has done very well with the judges so far. Jess Hotter and Lily Bradley are also blowing a fresh, more relaxed breeze in the women's skiing.

The new format of the tour finale will be exciting: two runs will be completed in Fieberbrunn, only one of which will count towards the ranking. The question is how the riders will implement this: Will the second run just be an optimized version of the first? Do they choose two completely different lines? Is it sent in full because a fall can still be compensated for in the next run? Is the second run sent even more because you are already qualified for the next season? Will takeoffs be taken for the second run after crashes? We will hopefully see!

Photo gallery

This article has been automatically translated by DeepL with subsequent editing. If you notice any spelling or grammatical errors or if the translation has lost its meaning, please write an e-mail to the editors.

Show original (German)

Related articles

Comments