Finley Melville Ives (Wānaka, 18) and Luke Harrold (Lake Hāwea, 16) have claimed the gold and silver medals respectively at the FIS Australia New Zealand Cup (ANC) Freeski Halfpipe competition held at Cardrona Alpine Resort today.
Melville Ives was excited to take the win, explaining; “I am so stoked, it’s so amazing and it’s such a good result at the last halfpipe competition of the season – I am really happy. It was such a high level event, so many good runs were being thrown down.”
Melville Ives stomped a technical run that was executed with precision and had plenty of amplitude, scoring a 92.67 to take the win. His winning run included a huge switch left double corked 1080 into back-to-back double corked 1260’s.
Harrold, who finished in second place with a score of 90.00, put down a hugely technical run that included his trademark, rarely seen, trick combination of back-to-back switch double alley-oop 900’s on his final two hits.
Harrold explained; “There are just a few of us doing them [switch double alley-oop 900’s] on the World Cup circuit, they are kind of my specialty, so I really enjoy doing them, it’s a super fun, floaty trick. The level of competition was really high today and it was so cool to see everyone throwing down their best runs.”
Benjamin Fethke of the USA rounded out the podium in third, with Kiwi Ben Harrington finishing just of the podium in fourth position with a super stylish run.
It was a tightly fought competition, with numerous World Cup athletes on the stacked start list. As it was a seeded start list, the top athletes were the first to drop into the halfpipe - Harrold was first to drop followed immediately by Melville Ives.
Head Freeski Judge Victoria Beattie explained; “Luke’s run is incredible, we knew we needed to leave space with the rest of the field still to run. It’s always a tricky choice when the first run of the competition is put down so well. Fin executed his run just that little bit cleaner, landed higher on the pipe wall, showed better control through the bottom and put down a great technical run.”
“Those two athletes were really toying for the top, Luke came out swinging in his second run but didn’t quite land it, but it was great to see a glimpse of what we can expect to see from him on the World Cup circuit this upcoming season.”
Today’s FIS ANC Freeski Halfpipe competition also included the women’s freeski category where Australia’s Indra Brown took the win. The snowboarders also took on the pipe today, Kanoe Pelfrey of American Samoa won the women’s competition and Zensei Nishizuka of Japan won the men’s competition.
Campbell Melville Ives (Wānaka, 18) finished in fourth place, with the snowboard judging panel said that his run and amplitude were excellent, and they were really impressed by his level of riding, but unfortunately, he just couldn’t quite stick the landing on his final hit.
Today we also saw the age divisions (under 8-years to under 16-years) carry on their week of competition. The freeskiers took to the slopestyle courses and the snowboarders flew down the Salomon Boarder-Cross. Points from each day are accumulative and count towards the overall New Zealand age division titles that will be awarded at the end of the week.
Competition is set to continue tomorrow with the FIS ANC Freeski Slopestyle competition on Big Bucks terrain park and the age division freeski and snowboard competitions in the halfpipe.
