Eileen Gu and Birk Ruud win first slopestyle event of 2025 at Laax Open
Jan 17, 2025·Freeski Park & Pipe
Chinese freeskier Eileen Gu and Norway’s Birk Ruud each started 2025 with slopestyle wins at the Laax Open, with Gu’s victory putting her in the lead for an overall Crystal Globe while Ruud’s win put him into the top spot of the men’s slopestyle World Cup rankings.
While Gu has only appeared sporadically on the slopestyle World Cup start list over the course of her career, her win at Laax (SUI) on Friday marked the 21-year-old’s first World Cup victory in slopestyle since 2020 and comes a year after she was runner-up in Laax last season.
Gu claimed victory with a first run that saw her stomp a left double cork 1080 Japan, then a right corked 900 Buick, and a switch left bio 900 tailgrab through the jumps before launching a massive alley-oop 540 Japan on the bottom quarter pipe, for a score of 81.22 points. Canada's Megan Oldham finished nearly nine points back on 72.80.
In third place on 72.59 points was Switzerland’s own Mathilde Gremaud, who was last season’s Laax Open winner as well as the reigning slopestyle World Champion and Beijing 2022 Olympic Winter Games champion.
“This course for me has been so much fun. It’s so creative, you never really know what you’re going to expect at Laax but you can count on it being a really fun, really unique, innovative course.”
Gu’s win on Friday marks her 18th World Cup victory and puts her in front of Italian skier Flora Tabanelli in the overall FIS Freeski Park & Pipe standings for the 2024/25 season.
Bouncing back from an illness earlier in the week, 17-year-old Tabanelli finished fourth on Friday on 70.67 points, and slipped from first to second place in the women’s overall Park & Pipe standings with 380 points compared to Gu’s 400 points.
Gu’s win is her fourth from four World Cup starts this season, including three consecutive halfpipe wins at Cardrona (NZL), Secret Garden (CHN) and Copper Mountain (USA) respectively.
The 21-year-old admitted the transition from halfpipe to slopestyle is not as easy as it looks.
On the men’s side, last year’s Laax winner and reigning men’s slopestyle World Champion Birk Ruud (NOR) claimed victory with 85.54 points, while the USA’s Mac Forehand was second on 83.69 points.
Fellow American skier and Beijing 2022 slopestyle champion Alex Hall took third place on 81.62 points.
Friday’s win is Ruud’s first World Cup podium since winning the Laax Open in 2024 after the 24-year-old finished outside of the top five at seven World Cup stops across slopestyle and big air, including 18th last week at Big Air Kreischberg.
With his 15th World Cup career podium, Rudd extended his lead atop the men’s FIS Freeski overall wins leaderboard.
That winning run saw Ruud lead off the jump line with a switch right double cork 1440 mute, followed by a massive switch left double cork 1620 mute on the wu-tang jump, then a left double cork 1440 safety, before sending the gnarliest trick of the day on the quarter pipe with a towering right double flare safety and then finishing it all off with the right 450 on to switch on the final rail which tripped him up in run one.
A positive mindset is key to being able to adapt to a slopestyle course as varied as the Laax one, said the Norwegian skier.
Ruud’s victory puts him atop the FIS Slopestyle World Cup standings, but fellow Norwegian Tormod Frostad leads the overall men’s FIS Park & Pipe standings after nine events. Frostad finished seventh on Friday, but remains on top of the overall rankings thanks to the points he collected from his big air win in Beijing, his third place at the slopestyle season opener in Stubai, and second place in big air in Chur.
The next slopestyle event on the FIS Freeski World Cup calendar will take place in Aspen (USA) between 30 January and 1 February 2025.
)
