Freeride World Tour

This season's fifth ContestHappening is all about the 4* FWQ in Montafon, we also look back at the Youngstars Challenge in Oberstdorf and forward to the 1* FWQ on Hochfelln and the upcoming FWT stop in Andorra.

There are freeriders, not only you and me from the German speaking parts of the Alps, but also Japanese freeriders, like Yu Sasaki. He is familiar to us from FWT competitions. I watched Kicking Horse and Yu's run i.m.h.o. would have been the winning line if he hadn't screwed up the drop from the wind lip on top of the face, which was penalized by the judges. ContestHappening didn't mention his run, thus, in order to let justice and mercy prevail, we honor Yu's great line and big drop here!

Good snow conditions and solid riding performances were on show at the replay of the FWT contest on Sunday evening. At the second tour stop of the FWT 2020 in Kicking Horse, Golden, BC, Jessica Hotter (NZL), Marion Haerty (FRA), Kristofer Turdell (SWE) and Jonathan Penfield (USA) were crowned winners.

The third ContestHappening of the season is about the Freeride Junior World Championships in Kappl, the FWQs in Engadin and Les Arcs, as well as a new season wildcard for the FWT and two more wildcards for the Kicking Horse stop.

Please note: your esteemed editor was suffering from severe flu, only had enough strength to watch the pseudo-live broadcast of the Freeride World Tour in Hakuba, and then stayed alive after all. He then became aware of Elias Elhardt's film and connections began to emerge everywhere, between mountains and across valleys. A few flics from young and old for fun, and if that's not enough entertainment for you, why not watch Greta vs. Trump in Davos 2020...

Hedvig Wessel (NOR), Marion Haerty (FRA), Drew Tabke (USA) and Victor De Le Rue (FRA) are the winners of the first tour stop of the Freeride World Tour 2020 in Hakuba, Japan. Elias Elhardt from Oberstaufen took third place in the snowboarder category, while Tao Kreibich (AUT) and Konstantin Ottner (GER) were unfortunately unable to score points on their debut.

Children and young people are still heavily underrepresented in the Videos of the Week. We would like to counteract this. This is an episode with overly cute children and their overly proud fathers, and with incomprehensibly good young skiers.

Here we go again! The Freeride World Tour 2020 starts next weekend in Hakuba, Japan. The qualifier season has already started, after a few contests in France and French-speaking Switzerland, the German-speaking countries have now also kicked off the season with the 3*FWQ/2*FJT in Kappl.

Winter has only just begun and just in time for Christmas, no, not a new magazine from Downdays, but a whole book with almost 200 pages! We leafed through it and took a look at what the "Book of Ski Stories" is all about.

In the last ContestHappening for this season, we take a brief look at the last major 4* FWQ event in the Alps, which unfortunately had to be canceled after three starters. With the FWQ season coming to an end, almost all participants for next season's FWT have already been confirmed.

PowderGuide reinvents itself once again and keeps its finger on the pulse. Text and its linearity are passé. Moving images are the future. But PowderGuide is not just making a vlog, we are becoming the largest extreme sports video portal in Europe.

Freeride World Tour: Marion Haerty, Arianna Tricomi, Markus Eder and Victor De Le Rue crowned Tour winners! Elisabeth Gerritzen, Marion Haerty, Wadeck Gorak and Jonathan Penfield took the day's victory at the Xtreme Verbier.