All Photos: Courtesy of the Winter Video games NZ | Skier: Eileen Gu
After celebrating her twenty first birthday on September third, Eileen Gu acquired an unbelievable (and hard-earned) present a couple of days later. Gu took first place within the FIS Ladies’s Halfpipe World Cup occasion through the Winter Video games New Zealand. This was her fifteenth World Cup win, setting a brand new file and cementing Gu because the winningest skier is FIS Freeski World Cup historical past.
Friday’s qualifying lower left solely eight ladies within the discipline, 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 when you have been on the bottom at Cardrona final weekend, you wouldn’t have been capable of 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 unbelievable first-place runs. Her competitors expertise was in the end a deciding issue, as she demonstrated persistence and precision concerning her trick choice in such variable climate. Many athletes wrestle in these circumstances, as some push themselves too laborious given points with visibility and wind, and others play it too conservatively. Nevertheless, 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 rivals would be capable to high her rating. Nevertheless, 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 response to the Winter Video games NZ official press launch. To place her unbelievable efficiency into perspective, no different skier within the Ladies’s Halfpipe discipline was capable of obtain a rating above 90.00 all through the finals.
“The climate and the circumstances didn’t make it straightforward at this time however 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 file being damaged at this time 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 data 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 capable of 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 capable of beat out the one American within the finals, Svea Irving, and end the day in third place. With difficult circumstances and fierce competitors throughout, it’s actually 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 actually value maintaining a tally of as we head into the autumn and early winter.
This win, whereas one among 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 15th World Cup win again on the location of my first World Cup podium 5 years in the past. It means a lot. I believe for me, snowboarding is at all times about pushing the following stage 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 change into probably the most prolific rivals 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 large air, and silver in slopestyle through 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 capable of 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 stage.
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 carried out so much to carry 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 worldwide vogue mannequin. We’ll be sure you replace you because the competitors season rolls on, and as Gu, a seemingly unstoppable juggernaut, appears to assert extra victories all through the season.
