Press release -
Silver rain over the HEAD Freeski team
After a weekend jammed with great freeskiing action the HEAD athletes competing in the Freeride World Tour in Baqueira Beret, Spain and X Games in Aspen, USA, brought home a fine selection of silver! Big congrats to Hedvig Wessel, Abel Moga and Aaron Blunck!
X Games Aspen is an institution in the freestyle skiing and snowboarding world. The events of 2022 kicked off on Friday with, among other disciplines, the women’s SuperPipe where Zoe Atkin scored an honorable fourth place. Jesper Tjäder, who put on a show in last years knuckle huck couldn’t make it to Aspen this year and his slopestyle and big air colleague from Canada, Evan McEachran, had a rough night on Saturday’s big air event with two big crashes and continued to struggle in the slopestyle on Sunday. In the final category of the weekend, Men’s SuperPipe, American Aaron Blunck had a silver to defend from 2021. Solid and consistent skiing from the Crested Butte native gave him the lead until the very last run of the night but New Zealand’s Nico Porteous pulled out everything he got and passed him. Still a great effort from Aaron and another X Games silver to the collection.
In Baqueira Beret, Spain, the Freeride World Tour had a sparkling start to the 2022 season with massive airs, scary falls, stylish freestyle maneuvers and 15 thousand people in the crowd!
In the women's category Norway’s Hedvig Wessel made it clear that she's not messing around this year. A super solid run with a selection of grabs and a massive air landed her a second place on the podium.
Jess Hotter, who missed last year’s tour, started off very promising but got into trouble as she was going across to her second big feature. After tumbling down some serious rocks and hitting one of them with her back the New Zealander was able to stand up and ski down by herself.
Starting as number 1 in the men field, Blake Marshall from New Zealand, knew he had to pull off something special to impress the judges. Spinning right and left, taking a big technical cliff, all in his signature playful style, was enough for a 10th place.
As the local Abel Moga's name was announced the home crowd went nuts. And Abel did not disappoint them! Full speed, full determination and probably the highest cliff of the day put him in the hot seat! However, wild card Max Palm, who's run contained the first ever double backflip landed in FWT history, was too hard to beat in the end. But judging from Abel's grin as he received the silver medal he was fairly pleased with his daily work.
The last HEAD skier to drop in was Carl Regnér. During the final in Verbier last year the Swede delivered on his promise to do a flatspin 360 in a competition run. Whether this will be his FWT signature move from now on, we can’t say, but the crowd in Baqueira sure did like it when he did it again. A big cliff and a backflip later he entered the finish area and received the fourth best score of the day!
But it was not only the skiers that did well in Spain, HEAD snowboarder Núria Castan Baron also joined the “silver club” in the women’s category and Cody Bramwell scored a bronze among the men.
The weather window for the next stop in Ordino Arcalis, Andorra, opens already on January 30th, so we’re looking forward to more action soon.
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About HEAD
HEAD is a leading global manufacturer and marketer of premium sports equipment and apparel.
Our business is organized into five divisions: Winter Sports, Racquet Sports, Diving, Sportswear and Licensing. We sell products under the HEAD (alpine skis, ski bindings, ski boots, snowboard and protection products, tennis, racquetball, paddle, squash and pickleball racquets, tennis balls and tennis footwear, sportswear and swimming products), Penn (tennis balls and racquetball balls), Tyrolia (ski bindings) and Mares, SSI and rEvo (diving) brands. The Company´s key products have attained leading market positions based on sales and reputation and have gained high visibility through their use by many of today´s top athletes.
