Moguls stars shine at FIS Open event in Soelden

With still over a month left until the FIS Freestyle Ski World Cup officaly kicks off the 2021/22 season in Ruka, most of the national teams are undergoing their training camps at different locations around the world to work on their jumps as well as speed and technique on the bumps .

In the last couple of weeks we've seen many of world's best riders coming all the way down to train at Switzerland's Zermatt, which year in, and year our provides prime training facility along with the iconic views of Matterhorn.

This year the moguls community also revisited the place that hasn't seen a classic freestyle competition in a long time. While Soelden (AUT) is most likely know to snow sport fans as the opening event for the alpine World Cup in Oktober, the famous Austrian ski resort did host a series of aerials European Cup back in early 2000s. Also back in 1995 Soelden hosted an early season moguls Europa Cup competition, where the Canadian legend and the 1994 Olympic Champion Jean-Luc Brassard claimed the victory and the runner-up spot in back-to-back competitions.

This past weekend, nearly 26 years after the afore-mentioned event, the Austrian Ski Federation has brought back the mogul course on the slopes of Soelden with back-to-back FIS Open competitions going down on Friday and Saturday, October 29-30.

With over 30 athletes from five different nations it was the Kazakhstan Moguls Team that brought to Austrian their biggest caliber riders with the likes of Yuliya Galysheva, Dmitriy Reikherd, Pavel Kolmakov and Anastasiia Gorodko.

The Kazakh athletes claimed nine of total 12 spots on the podium available on the weekend, with Gorodko and Kolmakov grabbing top spots on Day 1 on Friday, with Galysheva and Reikherd stepping things up to clinch victories the following day on Saturday.

Full results are available HERE.

Worth mentionin is also the fact that the Chinese team showed some promising perfromances this past weekend in Soelden with many young athletes gathering their first experience in international competition. And while it's hard to expect Chinese athletes to shake things up in 2021/22, the long-term future of mogul skiing in China looks extremely bright indeed.

In just a couple of weeks from now another FIS Open competition are slated to go down at the World Cup venue Idre Fjall (SWE), where many of world's top guns are expected to compete just days before the highly anticipated 2021/22 World Cup season starts far north in Ruka (FIN).

Full 2021/22 calendar for moguls and aerials events is available HERE.