The Freestyle Rundown - June 5, 2020

Welcome back to the latest edition of the Freestyle Rundown, where once again we've scoured the web to find the best freestyle skiing content of the past seven-ish days and brought it all together in one convenient column for your scrolling, clicking and viewing pleasure.

First things first this week, as we'll point you towards our most recent #ClassicsLive poll wrapped up over the weekend, with the first-ever FIS Freeski slopestyle World Cup from 2012 in Jyvaskyla (FIN) emerging as the winner. Check out the humble beginnings of the slopestyle World Cup below, where Linn-Ida Murud (NOR) and Cyrill Hunziker (SUI) earned a little place in freeski history as the first slopestyle World Cup winners...

If you watched closely, you might have noticed a 17-year-old Jesper Tjader (SWE) dropping in for the finals there in Finland, where he finished up the competition in eighth. In the years following his World Cup slopestyle debut, Jesper went on to become one of the world's most influential, entertaining and progressive freeskiers, and anytime you see him pop up in the timeline you're going to want to stop what you're doing and take a look - a point he proved yet again with this mindbender from last weekend...

Let's take care of a couple major shout-outs before we get too far into the Rundown here, with the first one going out to Swiss queen Sarah Hoefflin, who FINALLY got her crystal globe as the top slopestyle rider of the 2019/20 slopestyle World Cup season, and marked the occasion with a Game of Thrones-inspired photo shoot...

Next, a big ol' "bravo" to French king Kevin Rolland, who juxtaposed where he was in the world on May 31, 2020 (throwing massive doubles in airbag training up in Crans Montana), vs May 31, 2019 (sitting in a wheelchair in the hospital after his near-death crash suffered while trying to set the quarterpipe air world record). Unreal progress from an unreal athlete...

Ok, so, we're almost a week into June, which is basically officially summertime here in the northern hemisphere, and which means it's time to peel off a few layers of clothing and throw a few salutations to the sun gods like our man in Sweden Oliwer Magnusson with this double backy in Äre...

However, if you're on decent slope but can't scrape enough slush together for solid cheese wedge, chances are there's a puddle of meltwater built up somewhere for you to dive in and throw up a couple rooster tails like Lukas Muellauer (AUT) up in Kitzsteinhorn...

Or, if you find yourself a good little patch and you've got the time to wiggle down the exact same run a couple hundered times, you can build yourself a solid rut track like France's Ben Cavet in Chatel...

No matter what you do in your summer shred sesh, at some point you're going to have to head down off the hill. While most poeple look at the rapidly climbing snowline and plan some sort of non-ski-based alternative route back down, USA halfpipe boss Alex Ferreira and his buddies are not most people, electing to go with nature's base grind and pointing it straight down over the brown...

Of course, all of the above warm-weather related snow issues disappear pretty quick if you've got the right kind of water ramp set-up, and we would say that Melanie Meilinger most certainly has the right kind of water ramp set-up back home in Austria...

Breaking news from Australia, where, according to ski cross standout Sami Kennedy-Sim, winter has arrived. Tough to tell from here, so we'll have to just take her word for it...

While he appears to be in good spirits, happy, and dancing, it has come to our attention that Spanish style god Thib Magnin seems to have gotten lost on his way to Andorra and ended up in Tahiti. If someone could find Thib and steer him back in the right direction it would be much appreciated...

No jokes here, just appreciation for US yuong gun Cody Laplante and his stack of raw clips from last winter down under in Cardrona (NZL)...

We'll roll out of this week's Rundown with a little game of "Choose Your Own Adventure: Exit Strategy", Norwegian style. Would you go with:

A) the Oystein Braaten smooth-hops-to-the-bottom special...

Or:

B) the Birk Ruud head-first-into-the-fjord chilly torpedo ...

As for us...well it kind of looks like cheated and used both options, because this is us exiting this week's Rundown NOW...✌️😜

Thanks for reading and see ya next week!