Absolut Park Spring Battle 2017: Winners & Results

International and national pro snowboarders and freeskiers were riding at Absolut Park Flachauwinkl for five days to battle it out and film some first-class runs at Spring Battle — one of the last events on the 2017 contest schedule. Snowboarders Emil Ulsletten and Yuka Fujimori and freeskiers Quinn Wolferman and Sofia Tchernetsky convinced the judges with stylish, technical and clean tricks and finally won their categories.

The slopestyle course featured a double kinked rail, a down rail, a transfer rail, a quarter, a spine, and two kickers this year. The obstacles were demanding and riders kept commenting the sitze of the huge kickers with their 22 and 24 meter tables, but the setup left room for creativity and a lot of airtime for massive corks and spins. The course was supposed to be challenging, because the World Snowboard Tour had upgraded it to a WST Elite Level Event, and in the Association of Freeskiing Professionals it was ranked as an AFP Gold Event. For the contestants, more tour points and a higher price money were on stake this year: 70.000 US-Dollars were distributed to the top four riders in all categories — even though the event felt more like a relaxed jam session with friends than a nerve-wracking contest

Riders love the follow cam format

For the third time, Spring Battle went down as a follow cam jam session: This means that riders team up, film each other’s runs as often as they like during the jam sessions, and each hand in the best run for judging at the end of the contest.

14-year-old Canadian Sofia Tchernetsky was throwing it down, even though she was the only female freeskier to hand in a run.

Sofia Tchernetsky was equally enthusiastic about the format: "The format is really encouraging, I’ve never done a competition like this — with filming instead of formally two runs and being judged and then finals — you just have to throw it all down for a video and you have so many opportunities to do that and get your best run possible, that’s great."

Swiss freeskier Kai Mahler was taking competing at Spring Battle for the third time in a row. Will he come again? "Definitely. It is always nice, every year. Until now, weather has always been good, at least for a couple of days, and it is sick here."

Swiss freeskier Kai Mahler was taking competing at Spring Battle for the third time in a row. Will he come again? "Definitely. It is always nice, every year. Until now, weather has always been good, at least for a couple of days, and it is sick here."

You can watch all the Epic Spring Battle News with tons of coverage and interviews of your favourite skiers down below.

The Absolut Spring Battle was on point once again and every single rider had a blast and put down some of the craziest runs in a perfectly shaped park!