Dear Interweb,
The Association for Freeskiing Professionals was formed this year “to improve and progress competitive slopestyle, halfpipe and big air skiing”. http://afpworldtour.com/afp/ The board of directors consists of five key people/leaders in the ski industry and TWO of them are members of our team: Sarah Burke and Trennon Paynter. Canada is well represented and it is a good sign that the AFP chose these two dedicated, knowledgeable and thoughtful people to provide advice and direction!
One of the things they set out to do was to create an international ranking system. “The AFP ranking system was developed to track men’s and women’s competition results of more than 18 events held on four continents in slopestyle, halfpipe and big air in order to name true global world champions.” So throughout this season, all the major, international competitions received a weighting (maximum score) and the top ten competitors received a score based on their placement. The top four individual results for halfpipe and top 3 results for slopestyle and big air are used to determine athlete rankings and discipline champions.
The surprise to me was that they awarded an overall Champion for the skier (male and female) who had competed in all three disciplines. I found out reading the AFP press release on Freeskier.com which said: Overall World Champion: Women’s: Rosalind Groenewoud I am pleased to be the first female to win this prize and it motivates me to continue competing in more than just Halfpipe events. I think more skiers will once again compete in all events in the coming year and I hope to see more big air competitions which have a female category. (The male champion was American, Simon Dumont.)
Here is how our team fared in overall results per discipline:
Halfpipe Women: Sarah Burke, 2nd; Roz G, 3rd
Halfpipe males: Justin Dorey, 2nd; Mike Riddle, 10th
Slopestyle Women: Sarah Burke, 9th; Roz G, 19th (I only competed in one event!)
Slopestyle males: Mike Riddle, 15th
Big Air Women: Roz, 2nd
I haven’t done the math on how Canada did overall compared to other countries but here are some other Notable Canadians:
Slopestyle Women: Kaya Turski, Champion
Halfpipe Women: Dania Assaly, 9th
Slopestyle Male: TJ Schiller, JF Houle, Phil Casabon—8th, 9th, 10th
Big Air Male: Ian Cosco, 9th
Congratulations to my teamies and my fellow Canadians!
Sincerely,
Roz G.
