The Freestyle Rundown - April 29, 2020

Hello and a hopefully happy Wednesday to the freeski ski family, wherever you are around the world. While #stayhome orders and the general unease of the current pandemic situation continue for what feels like the millionth week in a row, there are signs that the situation is improving in a lot of areas, and hopefully soon we can stop opening articles with a paragraph like this and kick things off with something a little more hype-inducing.

However, without further ado let's try and stir up a little stoke here now, starting off with a new series we've launched this week where we're looking back at some epic events in FIS Freestyle Ski World Cup histroy, and giving you the fans the option to vote between two classic competitions for the one that you'd most like to see. The winning competition of that vote will then be streamed in its entirity for one week on our YouTube channel.

This week we're starting things off on the Audi FIS Ski Cross World Cup, where you can choose between JF Chapuis (FRA) first win on the course that bears his name at home in Val Thorens in 2015, or Fanny Smith's (SUI) very first career victroy from back in 2010. Head HERE now to vote!

Speaking of revisiting some epic moments, the US Freestyle team is looking back at their 2019/20 moguls season this week. If that first clip of Tess Johnson going toe-to-toe with mogul skiing's top woman Perrine Laffont (FRA) in Deer Valley doesn't get your heart pumping from whatever couch you're currently sitting on, nothing will...

Colorado's Summit Daily News posted an interesting article this week where they spoke to Breckenridge legend and assistant coach to the Chinese national moguls team Scott Rawles, who discussed the challenges in trying to continue preparing his atheletes from across an ocean with an extremely uncertain timetable for when the team might be all back together again...

More freestyle in the news, as France's L'Equipe sports newspaper is running a quiz to see how well you know the life and career of halfpipe monster Kevin Rolland. We got 8/10...think you can beat that?

Ohhhkay, switching gears a little bit here, the Rundown is going artsy this week, starting with this extremely dope clip from Antoine Adelisse (FRA) on his way to gold at January's X Game in Aspen...

Followed up by an flip-book rendition of Mathilde Gremaud (SUI) dropping a right 9 at last year's Audi Nines...

And then there's Jesper Tjader (SWE), who got this straight-up mindblowing GoPro photo last month. We've got all kinds of questions about what's going on here, but man is this cool to look at...

And finally we've got aerials legend-turned-coach David Morris (AUS) combining art, comedy and current events in this beauty of a post from earlier this week...

Ok ok, one more art/ski crossover...how about freeski triple threat Eileen Gu (CHN) taking it off the slopes and into the halls of fashion with this spread in Grazia Magazine? The girl is a natural at just about everything she tries, it seems...

A quick interruption to bring you an update on the situation in China ahead of the Zhangjiakou 2021 FIS Snowboard, Freestyle and Freeski World Championships, where preparations are ongoing as the pandemic curve flattens out in the country...

Now for the best part of any Rundown - some actual shredding.

Newschoolers posted this insane clip of Garrett Balen crushing a homemade 30+ meter, triple C rail in the Tahoe sun...

And here's Ferdinand Dahl getting after it with a nice, slushy minirail line back home in Norway. Peep the cheeky blender on the second rail...

And bit of a longer clip to send us out this week featuring halfpipe kings Birk Irving and Hunter Carey out of their element and into the backcountry - whenever they got time away from the contest circuit this season. Awesome to see these dudes ripping it in different settings...

That's it for this week, amigos. Stay strong out there, keep fighting the good fight, and we'll see ya next week.

❤️