Hannah Kearney breaks Stenmark's record

On Sunday, the Olympic champion and reigning moguls FIS World Cup title holder Hannah Kearney crowned what has been a truly remarkable run of World Cup moguls victories by taking her 15th win in a row and eclipsing the number of consecutive FIS World Cup victories record previously held by Swedish giant slalom and slalom specialist Ingemar Stenmark.

Stenmark, whose record has stood unchallenged since the 1980 World Cup season, has the most wins of any alpine skier in history.

Kearney's shot at surpassing Stenmark's feat nearly didn't happen, as the American had some problems in her final run at Beida Lake (CHN) and she barely sneaked into the super final in 4th place. However, taking advantage of the new super final format whereby the skier's score is reset at the start of each round, Kearney was given a clean sheet from which to work. She made no mistakes.

"I made the super final in fourth place and really had to ski for my life," Kearney said after the race, "I skied aggressively and went really big off the bottom air and was rewarded with the victory."

Amazingly, Kearney didn't even know that she was on her way to eclipsing Stenmark's record until she had already done so.

"It's insane," she said, "I had no idea about the record. It's great to have this record as a freestyle skier. Alpine has a lot more races thus more opportunities to start a streak. That is the biggest honor that I can possibly receive considering all the amazing athletes that have crossed through the FIS World Cup circuit over the years."
Kearney will have the chance to extend her winning run on 18th February, as the FIS Freestyle Ski World Cup tour for moguls moves to Naeba, Japan, for the moguls and dual moguls events.

After narrowly missing the chance to top Jeremy Bloom's record of six consecutive moguls wins last week in Deer Valley, Canadian Mikael Kingsbury reclaimed his place at the top of the podium on Sunday in Beida Lake.

In a four-man super final featuring three Canadians, wonder kid Kingsbury was able to better teammate Phillippe Marquis and Kazakstan's Dmitriy Reiherd, who tied for second. "I am just trying to focus on being consistent every run and not make mistakes," Kingsbury said of his approach to the event, "Every course I for sure try to find the strategy that will give me my best performance, but not to focus just on winning. I'm happy, I'm still perfect in singles for the season and I feel good."

The man who halted Kingsbury's streak last week, Sergey Volkov (RUS), finished in 6th.

For more details visit www.fisfreestyle.com

Contributed by Chad Buchholz

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