Peel and Roth claim season’s first wins on Day 2 in Le Relais

Jan 23, 2023·Freestyle

Laura Peel (AUS) caught mid-air on her way to victory in Le Relais

A hugely successful two-day showcase of the best high-flying freestyle skiing wrapped up on Sunday in Le Relais, where the second individual competition closed out an epic weekend of aerials action in Quebec, Canada in a truly spectacular fashion. There, Laura Peel (AUS) and Noe Roth (SUI) rose to the occasion and claimed their first World Cup victories of the 2022/23 season.

After somehow a slow start into the season in terms of results, Laura Peel didn’t change her strategy and kept pushing with her triple flips as a sole female competitor in the field in 2022/23. On Sunday her efforts finally paid off as the 2020 and 2021 World Cup champion stunned the crowd in Le Relais by stomping the best trick on women’s tour so far in the season. Peel indeed took it to another level with her Lay-Full-Full, perfectly executing all of the trick’s phases and clinching a well-deserved victory with a high score of 109.15 points, well ahead of what her rivals could potentially score with their double flips combinations.

Sunday’s win for Peel was her first in over a year, with the last top spot for the Aussie skier coming in Deer Valley last January, where she scored a career high 118 points for one of the best back Full-Full-Full performed by a female athlete. With the tour now travelling back to the iconic White Owl aerials site in Deer Valley it will be interesting to see if Peel can build upon her recent success and also land a FFF this year.

Second place on the day went once again to Ashley Caldwell (USA), as the 2017 World Champion from Sierra Nevada snagged her second top-3 finish of the weekend and without a doubt will be among top contenders for the win in just a couple of days from now at home World Cup competition in Utah. In the super-final in Le Relais Caldwell received a score of 93.06 for her Full double Full.

Similarly to what we saw on Saturday, also Sunday’s event saw Anastasiya Novosad (UKR) rounding out the podium in third place, as the Ukrainian also recored her second podium of the weekend, this time earning 90.59 points for her double Full-Full.

With three of six events scheduled for 2022/23 season now in the books, Marion Thenault (CAN) leads the way in first place with 195 points. Danielle Scott (AUS) sits in second with 182 points, while Ashley Caldwell closes out top-3 with 160 points.

It was a highly entertaining contest over on the men’s side of things with Noe Roth also stepping things up a notch following his two runner-up positions in the previous events. On Sunday Roth led the way from start to finish, winning each round of the competition in Quebec and putting a cherry on top of the icing with his perfectly executed double Full-Full-Full, for which he received a high score of 124.43 and his first victory of the season befitting to his yellow World Cup leader’s bib he earned in Saturday’s event.

Coming straight off his first top-3 finish on Day 1 in Le Relais, Dmytro Kotovskyi (UKR) didn’t plan to stop just there and came with another stunning performance, this time finishing with 119.91 points for his Full-Full double Full, which was enough for the second place on the day.

After finishing just outside of the podium on Saturday, Christopher Lillis (USA) also stepped things up a notch to snag his first top-3 finish of the season with 118.55 points for his double Full-Full-Full.

With Sunday’s win Roth extended his lead atop the aerials World Cup ranking, as he leads the way with 260 points halfway through the season. Sitting behind in second with 158 points is Pirmin Werner (SUI), with Christopher Lillis rounding out top-3 with 155 points.

The FIS Freestyle Ski World Cup now moves three hours east to Val St Come for a double moguls and dual moguls weekend on January 27-28, while the aerials tour will move south to the iconic venue at Deer Valley (USA), with the next competition scheduled for Friday, February 3.

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