{"id":20589,"date":"2019-12-16T09:06:33","date_gmt":"2019-12-16T16:06:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.skyhinews.com\/?p=62096"},"modified":"2019-12-16T09:06:33","modified_gmt":"2019-12-16T16:06:33","slug":"americans-blunck-wise-tame-powder-filled-copper-pipe-in-grand-prix-ski-finals","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/local-news\/americans-blunck-wise-tame-powder-filled-copper-pipe-in-grand-prix-ski-finals\/","title":{"rendered":"Americans Blunck, Wise tame powder-filled Copper pipe in Grand Prix ski finals"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
Aaron Blunck of Crested Butte soars with an inverted trick high above the 22-foot superpipe despite the powder conditions at Friday’s Land Rover U.S. Grand Prix World Cup competition at Copper Mountain Resort. Blunck won the competition for the second year in a row. <\/strong>
Sarah Brunson \/ U.S. Ski & Snowboard<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

COPPER MOUNTAIN \u2014 Even though he had a U.S. Grand Prix halfpipe championship to defend later in the morning, U.S. pro freeskier Aaron Blunck of Crested Butte woke up Friday at Copper Mountain Resort with the same desire as so many in Summit County: to ski powder.<\/p>\n

Blunck rose at 5:45 a.m., looked out his window and saw it nuking.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018Alright, I\u2019ve got to get to the hill ASAP,\u2019\u201d Blunck said he thought to himself.<\/p>\n

Blunck tried to get up the hill with a crew of officials at 7:30 a.m. When that idea failed, he waited until 9 a.m. first chair to be one of the first skiers to rip a couple of laps on the 10 inches of powder off the American Eagle lift.<\/p>\n

He then proceeded to drop into the 22-foot-tall Woodward Copper superpipe and win the Land Rover U.S. Grand Prix men\u2019s freeski halfpipe event for the second year in a row. No big deal.<\/p>\n

Battling slow, snowy and low-visibility conditions, the 23-year-old former Ski & Snowboard Club Vail athlete earned an 87.00 to win the Grand Prix.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think the last time we had this much snow in the pipe was maybe two or three years ago,\u201d Blunck said. \u201cI think it was about three years ago it snowed about 13 inches \u2014 very similar conditions to today. But the snow was a little bit lighter then, so I think most people were able to get two doubles in rather than barely getting one (inversion) around.\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite the powder, Blunck began his championship run with a massive switch alley-oop double cork 900 \u2014 skiing backward and rotating to the left with two inversions and three rotations \u2014 with a Japan grab. Continuing his five-hit run through the pipe, Blunck landed a switch rightside 1080 with a tail grab before setting up the final two tricks down the pipe with a leftside flat-spin 540 with a safety grab. Those final two tricks were a rightside 900 with a tail grab and a leftside 1080 with a tail grab.<\/p>\n

Blunck said the challenge to his run Friday was keeping speed through the pipe despite starting out with two switch tricks. The first trick was especially tricky to navigate, as the switch alley-oop double is blind until you put skis to snow.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt more or less came down to having a down-the-pipe line,\u201d Blunck said. \u201cThat rather than going as big as possible, just trying to maintain speed as you went down.\u201d<\/p>\n

Blunck was joined on the podium by multi Olympic and X Games halfpipe gold medalist David Wise of Reno, Nevada. Coming back from a broken femur suffered just months ago, the veteran Wise said Friday\u2019s conditions forced him and the other competitors to use all the torque they had to get tricks around, namely doubles, despite not being able to soar as high out of the pipe.<\/p>\n

At the end of his 85.25-point second run, Wise skied to a stop at the bottom of the corral before saying, \u201cThat took everything I had.\u201d He was referring to the sheer strength necessary to get his leftside double cork 1260 with a mute grab around as his first hit at the top of the pipe. Wise followed that up with a rightside 1080 with a tail grab, a switch leftside 720 with a Japan grab, a rightside 900 with a tail grab and a leftside 900 with a Cuban grab.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf I\u2019m being totally honest,\u201d Wise said, \u201cI was lucky with the weather. Because I haven\u2019t done a lot of my normal tricks yet \u2019cause I\u2019m still coming back from this pretty big injury.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAll of us like to do doubles 12 to 15 feet out, not 8 to 10,\u201d Wise added. \u201cSo it was definitely a \u2018Who can do the smallest doubles and still get the grabs and make \u2019em look good\u2019 game today. In terms of power and strength, I don\u2019t have as much snap as I normally do. \u2026 I think it\u2019s kind of fascinating seeing how everybody\u2019s strategy has to change so much.\u201d<\/p>\n

Canadian Noah Bowman took third place with a run Blunck described as the \u201cmost stylish\u201d of the day: a rightside 360 with a stalefish grab, a switch leftside 540 with a high safety grab, a switch leftside alley-oop double cork 900 with a safety grab, a switch leftside 720 with a tail grab and a rightside 1080 with a tail grab.<\/p>\n

Those three ended up on the podium after dodging a brave take to the pipe by 20-year-old U.S. pro team halfpipe skier Birk Irving of Winter Park. Coming off a win at last winter\u2019s season-ending World Cup halfpipe event at Mammoth Mountain and a win earlier this season in Cardrona, New Zealand, Irving was going for the \u201cturkey,\u201d or three World Cup wins in a row. Irving might have earned it if he was able to hold an edge skiing backward through the pipe\u2019s powdery flat bottom after landing his huge double-cork 1440.<\/p>\n

U.S. women\u2019s freeskier Brita Sigourney, who took second place in Friday\u2019s women\u2019s competition, put Irving\u2019s fearless attempt at the 1440 in perspective.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat trick is insane,\u201d Sigourney said. \u201c\u2026 There is a lot of snow in the flat bottom, and dropping last out of the field, it doesn\u2019t help because that pipe is getting choppy. \u2026 It\u2019s accumulating like crazy out there in between every run.\u201d<\/p>\n

Irving finished fourth with a score of 84.50, followed by Americans Taylor Seaton of Avon (fifth, 80.35), Alex Ferreira of Aspen (seventh, 70.00) and Jaxin Hoerter of Breckenridge (eighth, 66.25).<\/p>\n

Sigourney\u2019s score of 85.00 in the women\u2019s comp came on the strength of a leftside alley-oop with a Japan grab, a leftside 900 with a tail grab, a leftside alley-oop 540, a leftside 540 with a mute grab and a rightside 720. She, like Wise, also podiumed after bouncing back from an injury \u2014 in her case a tibula-fibula spiral fracture suffered in May.<\/p>\n

On Friday, though, she was bested by Park City native and Great Britain skier Zoe Atkin. In just her fourth World Cup competition, the 16-year-old Atkin won with a leftside 720 with a mute grab, a switch rightside 540 with a safety grab, a switch leftside 540 with a mute grab, a switch rightside 360, a straight air with a double seatbelt grab, a rightside 720 with a safety grab and a switch leftside 360 with an octo grab.<\/p>\n

Afterward, Atkin took a page out of fellow champion Blunck\u2019s book and executed the plan she set with her mother over coffee at Copper\u2019s Camp Hale on Wednesday, when they looked ahead at the forecast.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want to ski pow,\u201d she said with a laugh. \u201cI\u2019m really excited to get out there after the win.\u201d<\/p>\n

via:: Sky-Hi News<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Aaron Blunck of Crested Butte soars with an inverted trick high above the 22-foot superpipe despite the powder conditions at Friday’s Land Rover U.S. Grand Prix World Cup competition at Copper Mountain Resort. Blunck won the competition for the second year in a row. Sarah Brunson \/ U.S. Ski & Snowboard COPPER MOUNTAIN \u2014 Even […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[56],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-20589","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-16 15:01:22","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KRKY Ski Country","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20589"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20589\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/krky\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}