Aerials World Cup continues in Minsk
Aug 31, 2018·Freestyle
Minsk, BLR -The aerials World Cup season continues this weekend in Minsk, with the penultimate stop of the season set to be staged at the site of the Olympic Sport Complex Raubichi, located 20km northeast of the Belarusian capital.
Returning from a two-week break, aerials athletes will wrap up their World Cup season over the next two weekends with competitions in Minsk and Moscow, before everyone heads to World Championships in Sierra Nevada to kick off competition there in the first week of March.
Last year's World Cup competition in Minsk saw some great skiing with Ashley Caldwell (USA) taking home a big win as well as the ladies' World Cup title and crystal globe. On the men's side, meanwhile, it was Caldwell's teammate Christopher Lills becoming the youngest ever men to claim an aerials World Cup victory, while Oleksandr Abramenko (RUS) clinched the overall title ahead of Belarus native Maxim Gustik.
With the chance for aerials World Cup crystal globe still wide open for a couple of athletes, we should expect nothing but a spectacular show to go down also this weekend.
In the ladies' World Cup standings it's China's Xu Mengtao who sits on top of the leaderboard, following her golden performance at the Olympic test event in Phoenix Park (KOR). Xu has reached top of the podium twice already this season, and has never ranked worse that third in all four of her World Cup appearances this season. With 340 points, she now has an 18 point advantage over second-ranked Daniele Scott of Australia.
Scott has been looking very consistent this season after running-up for the overall title last year, and she will be now trying to regain the yellow bib that she lost two weeks ago in Korea. With one victory and two second places so far Scott will have to once again aim high, as returning to the top of podium means also another change on top of the World Cup ranking. The stakes are high.
Thing are also pretty exciting in men's competition. Qi Guangpu (CHN) is currently leading World Cup ranking with 360 points after another impressive second place performance in Korea. In four starts this season Qi clinched two victories as well as two second places.
Sochi 2014 Olympic gold medalist Anton Kushnir (BLR) has proved to be back for real this season, and he has claimed already three big wins on tour, giving him still a good chances to push for the overall victory. And there's not a better place to go for the second win in a row than his home site in Minsk.
The action in Minsk is set to get underway on Saturday, February 25 with qualifications taking place at 9:15 (ladies) and 11:25 (men) and the finals following right after at 13:30 (all local times).
LIVE SCORING:
Live brackets for qualifications and the finals will be available HERE:
TV BROADCAST:
EUROSPORT 1 (ASIA) - Livestream available on Eurosport Player
CBC - Canada - deleyed on cbc.ca from 11:00am ET.
NBC - USA (Livestream available on nbcsports.com/live)
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