Burov extends his winning streak, Novosad claims career’s first victory in Ruka
Dec 10, 2021·Freestyle
The second week of FIS Freestyle Ski World Cup in Ruka kicked off another exciting series of aerials competitions scheduled for this weekend in Finland’s Lapland region, where the season’s third individual event went down in a big way on Friday. Representing Ukraine Anastasiya Novosad reached for her career’s first World Cup victory in the women’s competition, while Russia’s Maxim Burov claimed his third consecutive victory of the season in men’s event.
After hosting the biggest Freestyle Sk Opening festival in history last week, where two individual aerials competitions, one aerials mixed team event as well as the annual highlight moguls opener took place on the freestyle venues in Ruka, the famous Finnish ski resort was back in the game once more on Friday with the first day of aerials World Cup action scheduled for this weekend.
After scoring her first top-3 finish for Ukraine along with Dmytro Kotovskyi and Oleksandr Abramenko in the mixed team event last Friday, now seven days later Anastasiya Novosad stepped things up to claim her career’s first World Cup victory.
Novosad led the field confidently in the finals, first landing a solid Full-Full for a score of 88.51 points in the first round, just to back it up with a textbook double Full-Full that earned her 98.70 points and a place on top of the podium in the super final.
“I’m feeling very good right now,” said Novosad in the flash interview following the women’s competition, “It’s my first World Cup victory so I’m very, very happy. I’m happy for my team and for myself. I’m already looking forward to next stop in Canada as well as the Winter Olympic Games in Beijing. My preparations are on the right track and I hope I will be able to push my limits even further in China.”
Second place on the day went to Xu Mengtao, who was trying to defend her top spot from last week’s second competition in Ruka and decided to go for a triple flip, once it was all down to top-6 athletes. Xu, however, couldn’t quite land her Lay-Full-Full properly and with a score of 91.83 points, she finished the competition in a runner-up position.
34-year-old veteran Olga Polyuk (UKR) rounded out the women’s podium in third place with 79.75 points for her Lay-Full, earning her very first World Cup top-3 finish more than 14 years after her World Cup debut in Apex (CAN) back in 2007.
In the World Cup standing it is now Xu, who is leading the field with 220 points following her good performance on Friday. Her teammate Kong Fanyu dropped down to second place with 192 points after three competitions, while Novosad is following in third place with 186 points.
Moving over to men’s competition Maxim Burov claimed his third consecutive World Cup win of the season, while dominating yet another competition. In last nine individual World Cup events dating back to last year’s Ruka Freestyle Ski Opening, Burov claimed as many as eight victories. His only and somehow disappointing result came at 2021 World Cup finals in Almaty, where he finished in 10th place after failing to land his jump in the finals.
That wasn’t the case on Friday, as Burov led the men’s field from start to finish with three almost perfect jumps. First, he earned 129.65 points in qualifications, then 130.98 points in the first round of finals, just to put an exclamation point in the super final, where he landed a superb Full-Full double Full for which he received 133.48 points and thus an indisputable spot on top of the podium.
Chinese veteran duo of Jia Zongyang and Qi Guangpu completed the men’s podium in second and third place, respectively. Jia received a score of 129.21 points for his Full double Full-Full, while Qi scored 123.98 points for his double Full-Full-Full.
In the men’s World Cup ranking Burov leads the way with a perfect score of 300 points after three events, with Jia following up in second place with 170 points and Noe Roth (SUI) completing top-3 with 127 points.
The aerials World Cup in Ruka continues tomorrow as we have another action-packed day for the world’s highest flying athletes. The single round individual competition is scheduled to start at 9:30 local time with women dropping in first, and men following right after at 13:30. The aerials mixed event is then set to go down at 16:30.
QUICK LINKS
Ruka World Cup FIS data page (start lists, results, etc.)
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