The legendary Wildseeloder face at Fieberbrunn suffered from the snow conditions this season. The whole skier’s left side, which had seen the majority of action in previous years, was ruled out due to the lack of snow, and the rest also posed questions for how many riders it would tolerate before becoming subpar for a major freeride competition. Therefore, the Freeride World Tour decided to split this year’s event in Austria in half as far as athlete numbers were concerned and ran all the snowboarders and the female skiers Friday, March 7, while the Ski Men’s category was postponed in the hope of a refresh and a weather window, before it finally had to be cancelled.
Nevertheless, Friday saw another great example of the highest level of freeriding despite the challenging conditions. In fact, it showed once again that harder snow conditions are sometimes more predictable for the athletes and therefore evoke their best skiing. The only thing missing was the freestyle element that had become omnipresent in recent years. The venue simply didn’t offer many take-offs or landings for trickery this season. Instead, the spectators witnessed a classic exhibition of big mountain freeriding and some outstanding performances in this respect. In the end, American Lily Bradley had the highest score of the day with an amazing run including two big jumps for a well deserved victory. Next to her on the podium was Austrian veteran Nadine Wallner in second and Justine Dufour-Lapointe, the current tour leader from Canada, in third. All three athletes had jumped one of the biggest cliffs in the history of Fieberbrunn.
