Secret Garden ready for third stop of 2019/20 halfpipe World Cup
Dec 18, 2019·Freeski Park & Pipe
The third halfpipe competition of the 2019/20 FIS Freeski World Cup season is coming up this week in China’s Genting Secret Garden Resort, where strong women’s and men’s fields will take to the venue that’s destined to be the future home of competition at next season’s FIS Snowboard, Freestyle and Freeski World Championships as well as the Beijing 2022 Olympic Winter Games in just over two years time. With those two major competitions on the horizon and the holidays coming up, riders on hand will be looking to finish off the 2010’s with a bang at the last competition of the decade.
It’s Zhang Kexin of China and he USA’s Aaron Blunck leading the World Cup standings after two events thus far, with Zhang opening the season with a win in Cardrona back in August, and Blunck fresh off a victory at a snowy Copper Mountain (USA) pipe competition that went down this past weekend in Colorado.
Though Zhang didn’t hit the podium in Copper Mountain on Friday, she still skied well enough to make finals, where she ended up in fourth, just a couple points back of third-place finisher Rachael Karker (CAN). With Copper winner Zoe Atkin (GBR) and runner-up Brita Sigourney (USA) both electing not to make the trip to China this week, Zhang’s got an excellent chance to three-peat in Secret Garden this weekend, having won both the previous iterations of the competition in 2017/18 and 2018/19.
You can also expect Karker to push strongly for the top spot this weekend, while fellow Copper finalists Valeriya Demidova (RUS) and Devin Logan (USA), and China’s own Li Fanghui are likely to be in the mix as well.
On the men’s side of things, it’s all about the North Americans on hand in Secret Garden.
Blunck took a third in Cardrona to go along with last week’s win, and the two-time reigning world champion is looking supremely confident in every run he’s dropping in on so far this season. Arriving in China as part of a heavy US team that includes Cardrona winner Birk Irving, PyeongChang Olympic bronze medallist Alex Ferreira, stylemaster Taylor Seaton, and a slew of others, Blunck and the rest of his compatriots are going to be a tough force for the rest of the field to face.
Look to Canada’s Noah Bowman - a two-time podium finisher already this season, who sits third overall behind Blunck and Irving - and his Canadian teammates Brendan McKay and Sam McKeown to throw a proverbial wrench in the proverbial gears of a possible US sweep this week in China.
This is the third time Secret Garden has hosted halfpipe World Cup action, and the top-level pipe shaping team on hand has the 23-foot behemoth in prime shape for this weekend’s competition. While chilly temperatures and some wind through the training days could come into play, expect the riders on hand to be fully dialed-in for Thursday’s qualies.
Competition at Secret Garden gets underway at Thursday’s qualifications, where the women will be dropping in first at 9:30 local time, followed by the men at 11:15. Finals are slated for Saturday beginning at 11:00 (04:00 CET).
QUICK LINKS
Secret Garden data page (start lists, live scoring, results)
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