The Freestyle Rundown - July 31, 2020

It's the last day of the work week, the last day of July, and the last day for this column, as we wrap up the month with what will be the last weekly Freestyle Rundown for the summer of 2020. While we'll likely bring the Rundown back as a monthly piece towards the end of August, between now and then we're going to work on bringing you some more focused content in the coming weeks - including some looks back to standout performances from the 2019/20 season that may not have gotten the attention they deserved - while also working on our preparations for what is shaping up to be a challenging 2020/21 World Cup season ahead.

But for now we're here, the weather's hot in the north, August is stretched out before us, and the content never, ever stops coming, so buckle up and let's get into it - beginning with this one from Maggie Voisin, who's up at Mt Hood and reminding you to always do your favourite trick at least once a day. Especially if it looks this good...

While one sweet shot from Hood is always a nice way to kick off the Rundown, you know it's shaping up to be a good week when we can follow that up with two minutes and 20 seconds of pure perfection - courtesy of US halfpipe coach (and Sochi 2014 silver medallist) Mike Riddle. Riddle's taken up filming along with his coaching duties and is quickly establishing himself as one of the best in the business. This is a must-watch from start to finish...

Good gracious that's nice.

A couple more from Hood now before moving on, as Cody Laplante takes us on a little trip to paradise, dropping three rail bangers over in the park...

And Tess Johnson reminds us that the US moguls squad has been keeping busy, too, with this little slice of off-axis bluebird perfection...

Time to take a trip down south of the equator where a few of New Zealand's finest dropped some science on us this week, including Beau James Wells, who was out in his backyard at Cardrona doing what he does best and casually killing it with this park line...

Speaking of style and speaking of Wells boys, the inimitable Jossi got in on the action with this Woodsy-filmed beauty...

And here's a couple quick ones from Margaux Hackett - also back on snow in Cardrona, also as steezy as you could ask for, and also making us jealous...

Lots happening in Europe right now as well, both on-snow and...kind of on-snow but also kind of on grass? Prinoth's Crosspark Reiteralm has been running some ski cross start-section training with a strip of snow to start things off, into astroturf over the first few features, and from the looks of the photos it's running pretty good. Great to see the world's top SX facility making it happen for these athletes...

However, over in Switzerland it's looking like the ski cross ante is about to get upped, as the work is on to transform Saas Fee into an SX paradise through the latter half of the summer. With Swiss coach Ralph Pfalffi leading the charge there in Saas Fee there's no way this isn't going to be mint...

Sticking with the Swiss ski cross theme for a minute, 2019/20 standout Ryan Regez checked in with a pretty inspiring summer 2020 update this past week. Ryan may have finished last season ranked second overall on the Audi FIS Ski Cross World Cup tour, but by the looks of it he is winning the summer...

Switzerland, massive air time, lots of water...seems like suitable transition over to the aerials squad and last season's crystal globe winner Noe Roth, who's been dropping some serious hammers on the water ramp over the last few weeks, as illustrated below...

And while we're at it, here's a nice one from Noe's teammate Nicholas Gygax, as well...

Sticking with water ramps but hopping over to Canada, two-time Olympic medallist Justine Dufour-Lapointe is back on skis, and by the looks of it she's cooking up some newness off the jumps for next season...

While we're on the topic of moguls, Melanie Meilinger just wrapped up her summer session in Kitzsteinhorn, blessing us with one more POV shot before saying goodbye to the glacier for the season...

Ok, we're gonna switch gears here for a minute, as it was a big, big week for backflips on the ol' timeline, with some truly awe-inspiring variations coming down the tubes. We'll kick things off in this section with Will Feneley and a pretty remarkable display of power and balance in this half-backie to handstand...to handstand push-up?! Just watching this hurts every muscle in our core...

Also in on the half-backie heroics was Evan McEachran, who got through 50% of this gainer before meeting the water kisser-first. You ok, Ev?

We're not sure if Andri Ragettli also dropped a half-backie to land in this position, upside down in Portugal, but we're running with a theme right now so we're just going to assume that that's the case and throw it in here for good measure...

Meanwhile, Ukrainian aerials ace Oleksandr Abramenko stepped it up with this 2m box jump to backflip dismount that might make you want to reasses your idea of explosiveness...

Here's Oystein Braaten looking to get in on the action, but, uhh...better luck next time, amigo...

The big winner of the week in the backflip department is Vincent Ville, with this standing backie to slide put-on that is almost certainly the smoothest way you could ever hope to exit your gym session...

Appropros of nothing, we just discovered that Antoine Adellise has other superpowers aside from his pre-grabbing switch triples...

Alright, we're winding it down here for the week - and, therefor, for the whole Rundown series - but before we go let's drop one more edit, with Lukas Muellauer's latest from Molltaler giving us a little scratch for that shred itch that just won't go away...

And, finally, we'll finish things off with Cassie Sharpe, who sums up our feelings exactly with this one...

And that's it for now! Thanks for following along with the Rundown through the spring and summer as we've tried to keep it fun and positive and through what has been a pretty rough four months for the entire world. Keep keepin' on, everyone, and stay tuned to our channels for some new stuff in August.

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