Goepper and Voisin Fourth in Winter Games NZ
CARDRONA, New Zealand (Aug. 28, 2017) – Over the weekend, Nick Goepper (Lawrenceburg, Ind.) and Maggie Voisin (Whitefish, Mont.) walked away from the first FIS World Cup slopestyle of the season with solid fourth place finishes. James Woods of Great Britain took the win for the men and Kelly Sildaru of Estonia won for the women.
Many of the world’s best freeskiers were back on snow this weekend at Cardrona Alpine Resort in New Zealand as a part of the Winter Games NZ. Held every two years, the event hosts athletes from around the world in a variety of different sports, including freeskiing, snowboarding, alpine, cross country, curling and hockey. The slopestyle athletes were up first for their first major event of the Olympic season.
Conditions were variable throughout the competitions, including steady wind during practice and qualifiers and freezing rain the night before finals. Goepper, the 2014 Olympic bronze medalist, was sitting in second place after his first run, but—battling flat light—didn’t quite land the switch right double 1440 tail in his second run, allowing Swiss skiers Andri Ragettli and Fabian Boesch to move into second and third, respectively.
Alex Hall (Salt Lake City, Utah) and McRae Williams (Park City, Utah) also made finals, finishing in eighth and 10th.
Maggie Voisin takes fourth place. (Neil Kerr)
Voisin also had a strong showing at her first comp of the year, landing a switch left 450 lipslide on the flat down rail and a left rodeo 9 Japan, and sat in third until the last skier dropped and bumped her to fourth. Behind Voisin, Darian Stevens (Missoula, Mont.) finished 10th, Julia Krass (Hanover, N.H.) 11th and Caroline Claire (Manchester Center, Vt.) 26th.
“The strategy was to use this comp as a warm up contest to play with some ideas,” said Head Slopestyle Coach Skogen Sprang. “We’re mentally preparing for getting into comp mode and landing runs under pressure.”
Freeskiing action continues at the Winter Games NZ with halfpipe qualifiers starting Thursday and finals on Friday.
