Moguls World Cup heads to Tazawako for back-to-backs
Feb 20, 2020·Freestyle
The athletes of the FIS Freestyle Ski Moguls World Cup have jumped across the Pacific to Japan’s Tazawako resort for a big weekend of action, with moguls and dual moguls action set to take to the resort’s typically excellent moguls course from February 22-23. Singles competition will be going down on the 22 with qualifiers beginning at 9:45 and finals at 13:30 (local time), while duals finals will also be beginning at 13:30, on Saturday.
This season marks the sixth-straight that the FIS Freestyle Ski Moguls World Cup tour stops in at Tazawako, and from the very first event back in 2014/15 to last season’s competition the event has been a season highlight, with the large, moguls-mad Japanese crowd that’s always on hand and some excellent battles going down between the world’s top skiers in front of them.
Dominant Laffont on track for more Tazawako success
The world’s top moguls skier on the women’s side coming into Tazawako is inarguably Perrine Laffont of France, who was riding a six-competition win streak up until she found herself on the outside looking in come time for the superfinal of the Deer Valley (USA) dual moguls competition two weekends ago.
The reigning Olympic champion and two-time dual moguls world champion, Laffont has four wins career and six total podiums in Tazawako - including wins in both the single and dual competitions last season - and the 21-year-old could very well repeat that performance again this season given the quality of her skiing so far through 2019/20.
Others to watch out for on the women’s side include Justine Dufour-Lapointe (CAN), who skied exceptionally in the Deer Valley, earning a third place in the single and a win in the duals event - her first victory in that format in four years. The Saturday’s singles competition in Tazawako will be the 100th start of Dufour-Lapointe’s career, while her next podium will be her 50th. Look for the Sochi 2014 Olympic gold medallist to rise to the occasion this weekend.
Third overall in the standings behind Laffont and Dufour-Lapointe is Austalia’s Jakara Anthony, who took second in the Deer Valley singles comp and earned two podiums in Tazawako last season, making her an obvious contender once again this season.
Jaeling Kauf, Hannah Soar, and Tess Johnson of the USA, Yulia Galysheva of Kazakhstan, and Japan’s own Anri Kawamura should also be in the mix on the women’s side of things.
Kingsbury and Horishima rivalry set for another epic chapter in Tazawako
On the men’s side of things, expect to see another titanic battle going down on Tazawako’s slopes this season, as the greatest-of-all-time Mikael Kingsbury (CAN) and his number one contender Ikuma Horishima (JPN) renew their rivalry at Horishima’s home-field competition.
Back at the 2017/18 iteration of the event Horishima thrilled the Japanese crowd with victory in both the single and dual competitions, while last year it was Kingsbury taking with the double win performance in Tazawako. With Horishima besting Kingsbury in singles competition in Deer Valley two weekends ago only for Kingsbury to come right back with the duals win two nights later, and the history the two have at Tazawako, it should be fun to see what happens this weekend.
Kingsbury is, once again, out in front on the moguls World Cup rankings thus far in 2019/20, and barring some sort of miracle final push of the season from someone like Horishima, the 27-year-old Canadian should be well on his way to an incredible ninth-straight season of taking the moguls and Freestyle overall crystal globes. That being said, Kingsbury’s lead this season is smaller than we’re used to seeing, with Kingsbury’s 660 points putting him just 135 ahead of Horsishima’s 515. While it’s extremely unlikely, it is at least possible that Horishima could do what no one aside from Kingsbury has done for nearly a decade and grab a moguls globe.
Further down the list, the next likely candidate for a little success in Japan this weekend is Benjamin Cavet (FRA), who sits third on the standings and claimed third in last year’s Tazawako dual moguls competition. Cavet has two career podiums in Tazawako, the same number as current sixth-ranked on the men’s standings Dmitry Reikherd, while current fourth-ranked skier Matt Graham has three third-place podiums in Tazawako in the competitions history.
Three others to watch out for this week are all flying the flag of Sweden, as Walter Wallberg and Felix Eloffson both come into Tazawako after earning podiums in Deer Valley, with their compatriot (and Felix’s brother) Oscar Eloffson also skiing exceptionally in 2019/20. No Swede has ever claimed a podium in Tazawako, but that could easily change this weekend.
QUICK LINKS:
Tazawako data page (start lists, live-scoring, results)
TV Broadcast info (coming soon, check website)
Livestream (coming soon, check website)
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