Eileen Gu wins Dew Tour Women’s Streetstyle

Dew Tour collected a deep field of women for this year’s streestyle, with three heats of four women each in the qualifier. The top two riders from each heat advanced to the head-to-head semifinals.

Heat 1: Lisa Zimmermann, Drew Hooker, Alexa Juncaj, Audrey Friess

In the commentator’s booth, Tanner Hall deduced that Lisa’s bike helmet is aerodynamic, and that she shouldn’t have a problem with the rail section. His prediction was correct: Lisa had no troubles and took first place with back-to-back 270s on. Drew Hooker improved on her third run and advanced into the second round with a solid run, finishing things off with a blind switch-up, continuing 270 out.

Heat 2: Marion Balsamo, Jennie-Lee Burmansson, Finley Good, Dasha Agafonova

Marion Balsamo had the most technical run from the second heat, with her switch on front swap on a flat-down rail, big transfer and a waterfall rail slide scoring an 80. Dasha showed some Traveling Circus stunts, but she wasn’t clean and flowy enough, while Jennie-Lee was skiing with style but just lacked a bit of difficulty. 15-year-old Finley Good was the one who improved every single run, and snatched the second spot with a huge 270 out from the wallride.

Heat 3: Eileen Gu, Taylor Lundquist, Isabella Tvede-Jensen, Rylie Warnick

Eileen stomped banger runs and didn’t give anyone a chance with three different 270 ons. Taylor flowed through the course with style and confidence to claim the number two spot—her 720 on to switch was bananas. Rylie and Isabella weren’t clean enough to endanger the qualifying spots.

The Semifinals

Lisa Zimermann faced off against young gun Finley Good in the first semifinals match-up. Finley did a huge 270 out of the wallride, but Lisa’s second run was just unbeatable. A perfect unnatural 2 pretzel 2 helped her score a 90 and she advanced to the finals.

Next up, Marion Balsamo vs. Taylor Lundquist. Snow snakes are real: Taylor caught one right after a perfect 2 on to switch, and couldn’t slide the last rail in her second run, so Marion’s solid skiing secured her a spot in the finals.

Last but not least, Eileen Gu battled Drew Hooker. Drew stomped a cool run with a switch-up transfer, but Eileen was just unstoppable. Her three different 270s on, including a perfect switch lip 2 and a big unnatural 2 on, scored 97.

The Finals

In the first run, Marion did a switch on front swap on a flat down rail and a huge transfer to 270 out, but couldn’t hold it on the last rail, where she crashed. Lisa wasn’t clean enough and made a few errors in the upper section, yet was able to do 3 switch-ups on the last feature. Eileen did a perfect right 2 and a switch lip 2, but lost a shoe on her left 2 continuing 2 on the last rail because of a binding malfunction. What a bummer.

On the final run, Marion chose a less difficult approach but still delivered solid skiing with a high speed rail-to-rail transfer. 73 points meant a provisional first place before her competitors dropped in. Lisa laced her full run with steeze: left 270 on, a perfect right 2 on pretzel 2, a backslide and two frontside switch-ups. The bike helmet queen scored a 90, and just needed to wait for one last drop. Eileen showed she can handle the pressure well. Her right 270 on, lip on front 2, switch lip 2 and left 2 continuing 2 was a banger run. The switch lip 2 was a bit questionable since she came off a little early, but the judges gave it a pass and scored it 91.7, which secured Eileen a win.

What a fun and refreshing contest to watch! The ladies were killing it, Tom Wallisch, Tanner Hall, and Devin Logan behind the mics were on top of the commentary and the crowd was going insane. Shout out Dew Tour for making it happen, and most of all for inviting such a deep field of women.