The Laax Open slopestyle finals were blessed with some epic Swiss winter weather today, and with the course in perfect condition the riders tore up the innovative course. Coming out at the head of their respective packs and bagging fistfuls of valuable Swiss cash were Max Parrot and Enni Rukajärvi.
The non-stop sunshine meant the park had softend up pretty good by kick off, meaning the men and women could take full advantage of the setup the Snowpark Laax crew had crafted – an upper rail section that led into a pretty cool hump that was ripe for buttering or Rodeoing, three kickers in a row and an end jib section with multiple up/down options.
Women’s snowboarding is looking pretty damned healthy right now, and the girls were on fire – a few were mixing doubles and 9s into their equations, but slopestyle is judged on the whole run top to bottom, and when it came to marrying rails with technicality it was Finland’s Enni Rukajärvi who came out on top to snag her second BEO slope win – her last was when she announced herself back in 2010. Enni’s run was made up of a Boardslide Pretzel Out on the rail, a Switch Backside 180 Mute over the roller, continuing with a Frontside 7 Tailgrab, a Backside 5 Stale and a Cab 7 Stale on the kicker line before hitting the final jib feature, and this was enough to place her a point or so ahead of a strong-riding Anna Gasser in second, and Jamie Anderson in third.
It’s about now that the ‘Oh Canadas’ should start as the men’s finals was dominated by the maple leaf-loving boys from northern North America – the second year in a row that’s happened here. Max Parrot had his game together best and went all in on his last roll of the dice to put down a run that went like this: 50/50 to Backlip on the rail, a Backside Rodeo 900 over the roller, followed by a Cab Double 12 Mute, a Frontside Triple 1440 and a Backside Triple 16 Mute on the kicker line before finishing off in style on the end feature. Mark McMorris wound up in second place with Tyler Nicholson rounding out the podium.
Full results list can be viewed here.