Le Relais ready for big World Cup weekend
Jan 21, 2023·Freestyle
After an exciting 2022/23 season’s kick-off back in December in Ruka and following the holidays break, the FIS Freestyle Ski Aerials World Cup has now moved over to North America with the first event of 2023 slated to go down this weekend, January 21-22 in Le Relais (CAN).
Last year Le Relais, located just 15 minutes away from Quebec City, saw the World Cup return to its slopes for the first time since 1995 and this year the World Cup tour is back again with back-to-back individual competitions this upcoming Saturday and Sunday. The organisers are prepared to welcome more than 1500 spectators at the bottom of the aerials site, including pioneers in the discipline Nicolas Fontaine, Philippe Laroche and Jean-Marc Rozon.
Operating since mid 1930s Le Relais has continued to live up to its reputation as one of the top family ski centres in the region. It’s also where the first great Quebec skiers were trained. Over the years that followed, Le Relais maintained its reputation as a major ski resort and it played host to the world’s best skiers while headed successively by such tenacious individuals as Joseph Aubé, Laurier Drouin, Clément Leclerc, or Jean Papillon.
Between 1993 and 1995 Le Relais organised numerous World Cup events in acro, aerials and moguls, that saw some of the greatest Canadians freestyle athletes such as Jean-Luc Brassard and afore-mentioned Phillippe Laroche shine in front of the home crowd. Now 28 years later the new wave of Canadian aerialists will continue a long tradition of freestyle skiing in Lac-Beauport region and those athletes will certainly do their best to make the home fans proud.
But they will have a tough competition this weekend, as there is a pretty stacked field of athletes on hand in Quebec and among those 19 women and 24 men appearing on the start lists for qualifications, there is definitely a couple of names to really watch out for.
Starting on the women’s side it’s hard not to begin with Danielle Scott (AUS), the winner of the season’s opening competition in Ruka, as well as her teammate Laura Peel (AUS) as they both are among a very few athletes with a triple flip combinations in their trick repertoire. And while Scott started the 2022/23 campaign on a high, Peel will be looking to redeem herself after somehow a disappointing performance in Finland, where she failed to put a Lay-Tuck-Full to her feet and finished in 11th place.
Nevertheless, Peel is still remains one of the main favourites for the win here in Le Relais and she proved that already during trainings, stomping some impressive triple flips including a Lay-Full-Full. It will be indeed exciting to see whether the 2020 and 2021 World Cup champion is able to reassert her dominance and return to the top of the podium.
Moving on, there is Canada’s Marion Thenault, who also started the season off strong with a second place finish in Ruka. Thenault also claimed the second place at last year’s event in Le Relais and again this season she will be hoping for a good result in front of the home crowd.
Staying in North America, let’s not forget about always strong US squad with Winter Vinecki and Kaila Kuhn in squad. Also after missing the first event in Ruka, Ashley Caldwell is expected to start her competition season in Le Relais this weekend as everyone is slowly building up the form for the upcoming World Championships in Georgia in the second half of February.
Moving over to the men’s part of the competition, there is obviously the Swiss duo of Pirmin Werner and Noe Roth, who are leading the World Cup ranking in the respective first and second place after their explosive start into 2022/23 campaign in Finland.
Then going further down the start list, also keep a close eye on Canada’s Lewis Irwing and Alexandre Duchain, number three and four from Ruka.
Let’s also not forget about Dmytro Kotovskyi (UKR), who will be hoping to make some noise with his Full-triple Full-Full aka the “Hurricane”, as well as his teammate and the 2018 Olympic Champion Oleksandr Abramenko, also very capable of getting on top of the podium on a good day.
Last, but not least the US Team will be putting high hopes in the likes of Christopher Lillis and Justin Schoenefeld.
The Saturday’s competition will get underway at 9:00 EST with women’s qualifications. Men will follow right after at 11:15 with finals scheduled to go down at 13:00. Sunday’s event will also get underway at 9:00 with finals coming up once again at 13:00.
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QUICK LINKS
Le Relais World Cup FIS data page (start lists, results, etc.)
