After the Freeride World Tour had been unable to hold its Austrian stop in Fieberbrunn for two years in a row due to poor snow conditions, everything seemed to be in place after the postponement from the planned contest day on Sunday to Wednesday. In bright sunshine and covered in the fresh snow of the last few days, the Wildeseeloder presented itself from its most beautiful side at first glance. On the way up the mountain, however, it quickly became clear that the wind had done a great job. The flags in the well-attended viewing area blew in a stiff breeze throughout the entire contest. Even on the face, it was easy to see from the widespread wind signs that the wind had blown enough snow to build up tricky drift snow packs. During the first forerunners, it also became clear that precisely these packs can be triggered by the additional load of a skier. New Zealander Craig Murray, who comes from the junior series, and Tyrolean freeride legend Matthias "Hauni" Haunolder triggered snowboards in several places during their runs. Nevertheless, the women's ski contest started as planned.
Ski Women
Two-time world champion Nadine Wallner from Austria was the first to start. She chose a line in the slightly less snowy left part of the face. In doing so, she triggered a medium-sized slab of snow in steep terrain and obviously stopped short in shock. Hazel Birnbaum (USA) was second at the start. She triggered a snow slab above a gully and unfortunately skied into this gully a few turns later and was swept away by the snow. She lost both skis and was rescued unharmed by the helicopter. After these scary moments, the race organizers stopped the competition for the time being to have the slope secured again, so snow slabs were deliberately triggered so that they no longer posed a danger to the riders later on.
The statements of the commentators on site and in the live stream were somewhat disconcerting, as they all consistently spoke of sluff and never of snow slabs. On all four riders before the abort, snowboards were clearly recognizable (leading edge, slabs, etc.), yet they only ever spoke of sluff, which has to be dealt with in freeride sports. Based on their experience and reputation in the sport, the two expert commentators Martin "McFly" Winkler and Matthias "Hauni" Haunolder will also have been aware that in most cases these were snowboards. This made the trivializing choice of words all the more surprising and critical. There was speculation that the organizers might have given certain instructions regarding the comments, but this could not be confirmed. When the contest was restarted after around 30 minutes, the ladies showed some appealing runs from their slightly lower start.
In the end, Italian Ariana Tricomi came out on top, taking her first win in her first season. She impressed the judges above all with the fluidity of her run, in which she incorporated many jumps after a technical part. Second place went to Nadine Wallner, who kept a cool head after the restart of the competition and took second place with strong technique and a fast run. The women's podium was also completed by a newcomer to the tour: Lauren Cameron (CAN) took third place with 78.33 points ahead of Lorraine Huber from Lech am Arlberg (AUT), thus also securing her ticket for Alaska. The current overall leader Eva Walkner from Salzburg showed a very high jump in her run, but only landed with a backslap. Despite her tenth place, Eva remains in the lead in the overall standings.
