Cardrona kicks off the 24/25 Snowboard World Cup

2024/25 FIS Snowboard Park & Pipe season opener on Monday at New Zealand’s Cardrona Alpine Resort

Murase and Spalding take the wins in weather-shortend slopestyle season opener at Cardrona

It wasn’t an ideal end to the much-hyped 2024/25 FIS Snowboard Park & Pipe season opener on Monday at New Zealand’s Cardrona Alpine Resort, as a string of bad weather days finally resulted in the cancellation of finals at the Winter Games NZ slopestyle World Cup and the reversion to qualification results as the final results for the competition.

With sustained windy conditions experienced throughout much of the week, followed by an overnight storm on Sunday that forced the closure of Cardrona chairlifts for Monday and the ultimate cancellation of finals, it took a huge effort by the Cardrona and Winter Games NZ crews to make full use of Friday’s favourable weather window in order to complete the full qualification slate – a huge achievement unto itself.

With quali results standing as the final results in Cardrona, it was last season’s double crystal globe winner Kokomo Murase of Japan walking away with the women’s victory after putting down a score of 78.10 in her second qualification run on Saturday.

For the men, it would be Canada’s Cameron Spalding taking the first win of his World Cup career with a standout first run and a score of 82.50 in the men’s qualification session.

Murase proved yet again why she’s one of the world’s absolute finest, taking the win with a technical opening rail line that included a boardslide pretzel 270 out on the first rail, a cab 270 on 270 out on the second, and a frontside boardslide 270 weddle out on the cannon rail, followed by a backside 900 tailgrab on the first jump, a cab underflip 540 Weddle on the wedge jump, and a frontside 1080 frontside grab on the money booter.

Spalding’s winning run, meanwhile, began with a switch frontside 180 on to frontside 360 out on the rollercoaster rail, a 50-50 up, backside 270 lipslide down on the rainbow rail, and then a frontside 270 on to 630 melon grab out on the cannon rail, before the 20-year-old went through the jumps with a switch frontside 1080 Weddle grab, to switch backside 900 Weddle, and finally a show-stopping backside 1620 tailgrab on the last hit.

“I’m over the moon,” said Spalding after the awards ceremony in Wanaka on Monday afternoon, “I was just trying to have as much fun as I could, especially when it’s hard weather conditions. It can be tough, but at the same time snowboarding is an outside sport and we have to deal with weather everywhere we go so you just learn to deal with it over time.”

Second place for the women went to 17-year-old reigning slopestyle World Champion Mia Brookes of Great Britain with a score of 71.65, while third place belonged to the USA’s Rebecca Flynn, who dropped in on just the fifth competition of her World Cup career and walked away with a score of 57.58 for her first World Cup podium.