The halfpipe specialists descend on the 2022 Olympic superpipe in Secret Garden, China for the second installment of the 24/25 World Cup Halfpipe season.
It feels like a long time ago that the halfpipe season kicked off in New Zealand – in truth, it was. However, the pipe contests are coming thick and fast as the northern hemisphere’s winter is in full flow with the Copper World Cup coming just two weeks after this event.
Transition riding has had a new injection of interest in the last couple of seasons with riders like Nico Porteous and Hunter Hess bringing a fresh approach to the uniform walls of the stunt ditch. Unfortunately for fans, Nico’s return to contests was short lived, as he will not be competing in the halfpipe this season, instead focussing on film projects. However, the creative Noah Bowman returns to the start list, after some time out with injury, to begin his bid for a fourth Olympics. His pipe runs are always innovative and often the best to watch – it is great to see him back.
Fellow veteran, Nick Goepper, continues his competitive come-back this season after transitioning to halfpipe from slopestyle skiing. Impressive results last season make him a real podium threat – you should never count Nick out.
Coming through the ranks are some exciting young-guns. Kiwis, Finley Melville Ives and Luke Harrold, both look to be the future of transition riding. Last season they were banging on the door of the established names, putting down some serious runs. This season they have the tricks to make it through to finals more often than not and will put real pressure on the top riders.
Alex Ferreira won everything last season – he was unbeatable – all five World Cups plus X-Games and Dew Tour golds. That is an incredible achievement and sends a strong message to the rest of the field – catch me if you can. With the Olympics still two winters away however, can he sustain this level of dominance and consistency for that long?
Dominant is also how you would describe Eileen Gu, who only missed out on matching Alex’s sweep by coming second in Mammoth after results were taken from qualifications due to a cancelled finals. The only real weakness in her run is a lack of switch hits, although in Calgary last year, she added a switch 720 to replace her switch 360 – vastly improving her run. Amy Fraser and Zoe Atkin will be trying to push Eileen as hard as they can and will prey on any mistakes from the Chinese superstar.
Elien Gu fought through challenging conditions to take, what was at the time, a record-breaking 15th World Cup win. The title of most World Cup wins was taken back by Tess Ledeux by winning the Big Air last weekend in Beijing – Elien will be hoping to finish this weekend back level pegging with the Frenchwomen.
Brendan Mackay took the win after a nervous wait with last year’s Crystal Globe winner, Alex Ferreria dropping last. However, he held on to take the first victory of the season. The contest was heavily affected by the weather however, not giving us a clear look at everyone’s best runs. Many of the riders have spent the autumn at various glacier training camps, it will be intriguing to see whose run will come out on top.
Both the Mens’s and Women’s finals will go down on 7 December at 4am CET. If you have access to a VPN you can watch live on Youtube for free. You will need to set your VPN to Iceland, New Zealand or Australia. Or you can watch it on the FIS Live stream website but connecting from Switzerland