Blizzard Conditions Impact World Cup Finals in Breckenridge

Breckenridge, USA- (12 January 2014) – Blizzard conditions led to the cancellation of the slopestyle finals at the FIS Freestyle World Cup in Breckenridge on Saturday with today’s halfpipe finals narrowly escaping a similar fate.

The event was originally scheduled to take place at California’s Northstar resort but a decision was made before Christmas to relocate to Breckenridge due to lack of snow. Ironically the problem then became about having too much snow with organisers and athletes having to battle blizzards as well as fog at the Breckenridge resort.

After several delays as organisers attempted to alternately wait out the weather and clear snow off the course, the decision was made to cancel the slopestyle finals.

FIS rules state that, if a phase of an event cannot be completed, results from the last competitive phase of the event to be completed will be used as final results. In the case of the Breckenridge slopestyle, qualifications had been successfully completed on Wednesday, and therefore those results become the official results. New Zealand’s Jossi Wells received an official placing of 12^th.

Jossi will now compete at the World Cup slopestyle in Gstaad, Switzerland on January 18^th, which will mark the last opportunity for New Zealand to qualify a second nation spot in the men’s freeski slopestyle for the Sochi 2014 Winter Olympic Games.

Full slopestyle results can be found here

Snow continued to fall throughout the finals of the freeski halfpipe with athletes struggling to put down runs in the slow conditions. New Zealand’s Lyndon Sheehan landed his first run before crashing out on the second to place thirteenth overall. The crash resulted in a sore knee and Lyndon is currently being assessed by the team’s medical staff.

Full halfpipe results can be found here

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