Speaking of weather and terrain

Speaking of weather and terrain, the freeskiing at Rosa Katur was also pretty incredible. All the downtime for us judges was a bit of a mental endurance test but we compensated by ripping sick pow for a couple of days before heading back down for the halfpipe events. As was the case all season long, the qualification rounds were the toughest to judge. The top athletes are always able to stand out from the pack but the task of picking the top twelve is very difficult. Often the skier in the 8th spot could easily be compared to the skier in 15th so the scoring range needs to be given extra attention to ensure we get it right, which I feel we did.

The men's pipe comp suffered a bit from a big blast of snow so conditions weren’t ideal and no one was really boosting as much as they were capable of. Canadian coaches (and Whistler legends) Trennan Paynter and Marc McDonnel did a smart thing by taking their athletes to the Euro X Games for a pre-Olympic training camp on a perfect pipe in Tignes, France. That worked out pretty well and it was great to see Canadian Mike Riddle nab the silver in Sochi.