Marino and Sharpe cap epic Calgary Snow Rodeo week with slopestyle wins
Feb 12, 2023·Snowboard Park & Pipe
An incredible week of action at the Calgary Snow Rodeo FIS Snowboard World Cup wrapped up on Sunday with slopestyle finals, where the USA’s Julia Marino earned her second-straight World Cup victory in the women’s competition, and Canada’s own Darcy Sharpe put down one of the best runs we’ve ever seen on his way to a first career slopestyle World Cup victory.
With the sun breaking through the clouds and welcome, unseasonably warm temperatures greeting the finalists for women’s finals on Sunday morning, and a unique, Charles Beckinsale-designed course in prime shape, nearly all the pieces were in place for a day to remember at Calgary’s Winsport Canada Olympic Park.
The most important ingredient for that to happen, of course, would be that the seven women and 10 men dropping in on finals delivered some top-tier runs - and they provided that in spades.
MARINO GRABS YELLOW BIB WITH SECOND-STRAIGHT WIN
It was clear from the outset of the Snow Rodeo that Marino would be tough to beat, with the 25-year-old coming into Sunday as the top qualifier from Saturday and fresh off a victory on home soil at Mammoth Mountain last weekend.
Marino kept that momentum rolling straight into her first run of the day. Opening with frontside boardslide 270, Marino continued to pick her way through the multifaceted rail sections with a 50-50 to fronstside lipslide to fakie, then a switch backside bluntslide 270 out before heading into the course’s two jumps where she stomped a cab double cork 900 weddle and a backside 720 melon, before finishing things off with a backside bluntslide 270 melon off on the cannon rail for a score of 78.36 and her seventh career World Cup win.
As well, with Sunday’s victory Marino takes over top spot on the FIS Snowboard slopestyle World Cup standings from Reira Iwabuchi (JPN), with Marino now holding a virtually unassailable 83 point lead her Japanese counterpart with only one slopestyle competition left in the 2022/23 season.
“I’m feeling pretty good about my riding right now,” Marino said from the finish are after her victory lap, “This is a super fun course. I had a blast this week riding this. We got a ton of time on course to feel it out and get comfortable on it and put some stuff down. I wanted to go backside 1080 on my final lap but I got a little too hyped up, maybe went a little too big on my cab 900, maybe landed a little weird, so…I would have loved to have got a back 10 in there but oh well, there will be other opportunities for that.”
Joining Marino on the podium were a pair of Canadians, with Laurie Blouin landing in second place with a score of 76.41 and Jasmine Baird making a strong return to competition after a brief injury break to earn a third place finish, just back of Blouin with a score of 76.21.
Blouin’s Sunday podium was her third in three Snow Rodeo competitions since the slopestyle World Cup returned to Calgary in 2019/20 after an almost 10 year absence from the calendar, while Baird’s podium was her third of the 2022/23 season, to go along with her third place finish at the Big Air Chur and her win at the Edmonton Style Experience big air.
Not only did Marino take over the slopestyle yellow World Cup leaders’ bib on Sunday, with 253 points she also moved up into third place on the Park & Pipe overall standings behind Japanese riders Mitsuki Ono (360 points) and Iwabuchi (322 points).
SHARPE’S EPIC SECOND RUN EARNS FIRST SLOPESTYLE WORLD CUP WIN
While it was a big morning for the Canadian squad in the women’s competition, things got even better in the men’s competition when 27-year-old Darcy Sharpe put down one of the finest runs of his already impressive career to claim his first career World Cup slopestyle win.
Leading things off in his second run with a gap switch backside 270 lipslide on the down-flat-down rail, Sharpe then went gap switch hardway 270 on to 270 off on the flat down, and then into a frontside lipslide 270 out, which he gapped from the rainbow rail takeoff over to the long downrail.
Into the jumps Sharpe put the hammer down, first with a frontside triple cork 1440 weddle, and then a backside triple cork 1440 weddle, before finishing things off with a 50-50 to nollie backside rodeo 720 weddle out on the cannon rail.
Sharpe’s score of 88.85 was one of the highest ever earned in a section-by-section judging format, where it’s notoriously hard to achieve scores approaching the 90’s due to each element of the riders’ runs being judged separately and eligible for deductions.
In the finish area, with friends, family and a stoked Canadian crowd looking on, Sharpe was justifiably hyped on his week at the Snow Rodeo.
“I was trying to have a heavy rail section,” Sharpe said on his approach to the competition, “Especially in a rail dominated course, you’ve gotta make the most of it, and I love rails so I was trying to max those out. But man, that one run I was just in the flow, locking into everything and it felt so good.
“It’s my first World Cup win since 2015, but that was actually a big air, so this is my first slopestyle World Cup win and it means a lot to me just to have that on the mantle. It’s epic. And to have my family here, friends flew out, homies everywhere…I couldn’t be more stoked.”
Second behind Sharpe was the USA’s Dusty Henricksen, who earned a score of 82.66 for a second run that attacked the Snow Rodeo course with the unique, flowing style that the 20-year-old Californian has become one of the most beloved snowboarders in the world for displaying.
Rounding out the men’s top-3 and capping off an epic, four-podium day for the host Canadian squad was 17-year-old Cameron Spalding, whose second-run score of 77.33 was just enough to give him third place and his first of what should be many World Cup podiums.
With their Snow Rodeo podium cowboy hats drenched in champagne and smiles on their faces, the Calgary top-3s rode into the sunset for a few days of downtime before we head back to Europe for the biggest event of the 2022/23 season - the Bakuriani 2023 FIS Freestyle, Snowboard and Freeski World Championships, going down from 19 February to 5 March.
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