Snowboard big air World Cup season preview 2024/25
Oct 17, 2024·Snowboard Park & Pipe)
The 2024/25 FIS Snowboard Big Air World Cup season is set to start this weekend at the Big Air Chur festival, where a full day of competition for the snowboarders is going down on Saturday with men’s qualifications beginning at 8:50 CET, women’s q’s at 13:30, and finals for the top eight women and 10 men under the lights at 20:00 local time.
We’ve already put together a pretty extensive stop-by-stop look at the big air calendar on our freeski BA season preview (check it out HERE), so for snowboard we’re just going to highlight the top shredders to watch in what is the first qualification campaign towards the Milano-Cortina 2026 Olympic Winter Games.
WHO TO WATCH - WOMEN
Kokomo Murase, Kokomo Murase, Kokomo Murase.
While the Japanese team is the most talent-rich on earth from top to bottom - on both the women’s and men’s sides - it was 19-year-old Murase who made the biggest big air impact last season, stomping three different triple corks on her way to a win at the Copper Mountain (USA) big air World Cup and coming within inches of becoming the first woman to land a triple cork 1620 at the X Games BA comp.
While she didn’t put down the 16 at X Games, she did become the first woman to land a frontside 1440 there which, along with her women’s first-ever backside triple cork 1440 and cab triple cork 1440 in Copper, put her in some truly rarefied air over the course of the 2023/24 winter.
It’s not just Murase to watch out for the Japanese women, as 17-year-old Mari Fukada seems poised to take a serious next step this season. Fukada famously hit the World Cup running, winning her very first start at Copper in 2022/23. While she’s only earned one other World Cup podium since then, the footage she’s been posting this preseason shows she’s on a different level then she was at the end of last winter.
With Murase, Fukada, Reira Iwabuchi, Miyabi Onitsuka, and younger Murase sibling Yura, the Japanese team’s got the firepower to do some serious damage this season.
That’s not to say there’s no competition at the top, however, as it was Mia Brookes of Great Britain who claimed last season’s big air crystal globe on the women’s side with three podiums and a fourth-place finish in her four season starts. One of the most stylish riders on the planet of any gender, Brookes brings a combination of originality and smooth technicality that few others can match on the big jump.
Still very much amongst the snowboard world's elite at 33 years old is Austria’s Anna Gasser.The two-time reigning Olympic gold medallist and reigning big air World Champion remains one of the most consistent podium locks in snowboarding, and is showing no signs of slowing down anytime soon.
The wildcard of the 2024/25 World Cup season in the women’s field is Zoi Sadowski-Synnott of New Zealand, arguably the most talented all-around rider in the world. Sadowski-Synnott missed most of last season due to injury, but when she was on the scene she made sure to make a statement, as at the Edmonton Style Experience where she became the first woman to stomp a switch backside 1260 in competition.
Laurie Blouin and Jasmine Baird of Canada, Australia’s Tess Coady, Hailey Langland of the USA and Germany’s Annika Morgan are a few of the other names to keep an eye for the women.
WHO TO WATCH - MEN
As with the women, so to for the men, with the Japanese army leading the way in big air snowboarding.
Last season’s men’s big air crystal globe went to Kira Kimura, as the 20-year-old took 2023/24’s top prize in his first full World Cup campaign, highlighted by two podiums and a fifth place finish.
The reigning World Champion is 18-year-old Taiga Hasegawa, who also took the win at last season’s Edmonton competition and ended up third on the 2023/24 big air rankings.
Hiroto Ogiwara, Kimura and Takeru Otsuka swept the podium at the season opener in Big Air Chur last season, and now in 2024/25 the Japanese team is so strong that Otsuka has been bounced off of it.
Fully seven of the 12 men’s big air podium spots available - and three of the four victories - went to Japanese riders last season, with Ryoma Kimata and Hiroaki Kunitake also nabbing top-3’s and Kunitake especially standing out for his frontside quad cork 1800 stomped on his way to a victory at Copper.
The list of accolades earned by the Japanese men last season is truly astonishing, and we see no reason why that trend will change in 2024/25.
The long victory that did not belong to Japan in men’s big air World Cup competition last season went to the reigning Olympic big air gold medallist, as Su Yiming stepped up on home soil for the win in Beijing. One of the most explosive riders on earth, Su looks to be the top challenger to the Japanese dominance this season.
Looking beyond the Asian contingent you can still find plenty of heavyweights, though even the best on that list have their work cut out for them this season.
Norway’s Marcus Kleveland is as talented and progressive as anybody who has ever strapped on a snowboard, with eight X Games golds, two World Championships titles, and so many never-been-dones to his credit that we could write a book about it. However, the 25-year-old is battling his way back from an injury-riddled 2023/24 season, and what he’s able to put together this season remains to be seen.
Kleveland’s teammate Mons Roisland has actually been the more successful Norwegian over the past couple of years, earning Beijing 2022 big air bronze and backing that up with Bakuriani 2023 World Championships silver the following year.
The USA’s Red Gerard, Brock Crouch, Judd Henkes, Sean Fitzsimons and Chris Corning are all exceptional shredders, but podiums have been hard to come by for snowboarding’s birth nation lately, with only Gerard landing in a BA World Cup top-3 last season.
Canada’s Liam Brearley and Cameron Spalding are rising through the ranks over the past couple of seasons, but their success has largely come in slopestyle, with Brearley taking last season’s slope crystal globe and Spalding opening 2024/25 with his first career victory at Cardrona (NZL).
2022/23 big air crystal globe winner Valentino Guseli of Australia, Sam Vermaat and Niek van der Velden of the Netherlands, Italy’s Ian Matteoli and Chaeun Lee of Korea are a few of the other names on the men’s side to keep an eye on this season.
