The Freestyle Rundown - May 21, 2020

This week's Rundown is a Very Special edition, as it comes to you for the first time EVER on a Thursday instead of a Wednesday, which definitely makes it a Very Special edition and not just a "late" edition because we're in the middle of our FIS spring meetings and got too busy to finish it yesterday. No, definitely NOT because of that.

But yes, the spring meetings have been going down online all through this week as we look forward to the 2020/21 season. There's a lot of moving pieces that go into making the FIS Freestyle World Cup happen and there's a lot of uncertainty in the world right now, but a whole bunch of good people are working together to plan for a myriad of different scenarios, and the vibes are positive.

However, while the future is very much on our minds, we'll start this edition of the mix looking back to 2015/16 via our most recent #ClassicsLive poll winner. There, at the halfpipe World Cup finals in Tignes, we saw France's favourite freeski son Kevin Rolland take the men's win on home soil to earn his second career crystal globe in front of a frenetic crowd. Meanwhile a win by Olympic gold medallist Maddie Bowman topped off a strong competition on the women's side. Relive a World Cup classic here...

A couple of awards to a pair of standout athletes were announced last week, with aerials crystal globe winner Laura Peel earning the distinction of Snowsport Australia's "Olympic Athlete of the Year," while Jaelin Kauf was honoured as the US Ski & Snowboard team's "Freestyle Athlete of the Year." A well-deserved congratulations to them both.

Some more congratulations are in order to a couple of freeski mamas-to-be, as 2015/16 slopestyle crystal globe winner Tiril Sjaastad Christiansen (NOR) and Kreischberg 2015 world champs halfpipe bronze medallist Mirjam Jaeger were both showing off baby bumps on the 'gram last week...

Ok, back to our regular scheduled ski programming here...how about two and a half minutes of young stylemaster Cody Laplante (USA) crushing it in his return to snow after ACL surgery last year in Cardrona? Yes, please...

Or maybe a little bit of Oliwer Magnussen banging off a million different flat bar variations in this slushy spring session back home in Sweden...

Or maybe a svelte Sebastian Schjerve celebrating Norway's Constitution Day with a patriotic left 2 on pretz 2 off at his backyard training facility in Norway...

Devin "D-Lo" Logan threw it back to some better times earlier this week, remembering the US team's halfpipe Nations Cup win Calgary and the tradition of the whole squad enjoying a frosty beverege from the conveniently hollowed-out crystal trophy. Crazy to think that that tradition is probably over...

Cool stuff from GB moguls skier Will Feneley, who got halfway through a trampoline backflip before turning into digital dust last week. If anyone finds the pieces of Will please send them back to GB Snowsport for assembly, thanks.

Austrian ski cross star Katrin Ofner is getting properly medieval with the home workouts. This set-up looks like you could turn it into a trebuchet once you finished using it to lift...

Big speed and big jumps are always on the menu for the big Slovenian, as Filip Flisar is gettin' sendy on this prime-looking MTB jump line back home...

With all the spring meetings madness going on this week we'll keep it a little shorter and wrap it up with one last post, as US ripper Willie Borm shows us how different things can look with a little fresh perspective...

Ok, ciao for now, everybody. Keep keepin' on!