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Ashton three-peats at Freeskiing Championships

French skiers dominate men’s competition Some unexpected rain, warm weather and a long gap between snowfalls left the high alpine tracked out and hard for the Canadian Freesking Championships last week, but that didn’t stop some of the best

French skiers dominate men’s competition

Some unexpected rain, warm weather and a long gap between snowfalls left the high alpine tracked out and hard for the Canadian Freesking Championships last week, but that didn’t stop some of the best big mountain skiers in the world from putting on a show.

The competition was tight from the beginning, pushing athletes to go harder and bigger than you would have thought possible. While Whistler athletes have dominated at home in past years, this year they faced a strong, experienced international field that by now is familiar with the terrain on Blackcomb Mountain.

Whistler Freeride Team member Jenn Ashton skied hard and consistently to claim her third consecutive Canadian title, plus 50 points towards her goal of repeating as the overall International Free Skiers Association (IFSA) World Tour champion.

Ashton finished second on the first day of competition in Ruby Bowl, on Jan. 10, with a score of 30.8.

Jenna Funston from Big Sky, Montana held the lead going into the second day of competition with a score of 35.8. She couldn’t capitalize on the second day, stalling in a few sections.

Ashton was consistent once again, skiing as fast as the conditions would allow and using as much of the terrain as possible in Diamond Bowl..

For Ashton, who is renowned for skiing tight lines and dropping, the conditions were frustrating.

"It was just too hard packed to drop anything big, or even slightly big. Nothing over 10 feet anyway," she said.

On competition days, Ashton decided against two lines she had picked out earlier that week because they weren’t safe. Instead, her strategy was to use as much of the rock and tree areas on the side of the bowl as she could to increase the difficulty level of her run. Competitors are judged on line choice, control, technique, fluidity and aggression.

"The middle of the run was pretty boring, and the judges like the skiers to push their abilities, so the more features you can use, little jumps and drops and things, the better," said Ashton. "At the same time you’re nervous because you are competing, and you want to lay down the best run that you can. You can’t second-guess yourself."

Not only did the conditions take away a lot of the lines that Ashton would otherwise have skied, it also made endurance a factor.

"It was very physically demanding," she said.

"How often do you do a full Diamond Bowl run from top to bottom? Your legs get burned, you get tired. Especially with the conditions, your body and your legs are working so much harder. You’re always bouncing and use a lot more energy. It may look easy, but it’s really hard."

Ashton’s day two score of 33.6 was good enough for a combined score of 64.4 and her third Canadian title.

The winner on the second day was Ingrid Backstrom of Squaw Valley, California, with a 37.4. But without a strong score on the first day of the competition, Backstrom ended the day in third. Funston slipped from first after day one into second place overall.

Although she took the win with her consistent skiing, Ashton says she was disappointed that she didn’t win on either day.

"I like to think that I’m a pretty consistent skier under any conditions, and that I’m good enough to win. I pulled up a few times, and I hesitated, which cost me. I’d like to have a few of those runs back."

Ashton says she will continue with the tour in pursuit of her second World title. Now that she is a sponsored skier with backing from Head/Tyrolia, Uvex, Leki and SnoMotion, she says her job this winter is to ski in as many competitions as she can.

She is looking forward to the U.S. and European stops on the tour, but one event she is particularly interested in is a new freeskiing competition in Bulgaria.

"We’ve been to some of the other places, but I think it’s pretty cool to go somewhere different to ski. There’s not a lot of prize money, but I think it would be a good experience," she said.

In the men’s competition, Pemberton’s Hugo Harrison, the reigning World Tour champion, was sidelined with a shoulder injury. Pierre-Yves Leblanc, who won at Whistler last season, had a disappointing first day with a score of 33.4 that left him in the middle of the pack. He put together an incredibly unique and technical line on day two to make up the distance, and was awarded 40 points for his daring. He moved up into third place with a total score of 73.4, a position he shared with Rick Greener of Snowbird, Utah.

The real story in the men’s competition was the fearless skiing of Manuel Gaidet and Guerlain Chicherit of France.

While the biggest cliff of the day had to go to Japanese skier Sasaki Daisuke with a clean 50-foot jump onto the hard-packed snow, both Gaidet and Chicherit went for quantity as well as quality, dropping 40-plus foot cliffs into the bowl, and using cliff bands on both sides to crank up the difficulty level.

At one point, Chicherit skied down a 30-foot rock face that was covered in ice, did an accidental somersault at the bottom, and wound up back on his feet, lining up another set of drops. The scary thing is that Chicherit was the third skier to ski that rock face, and he attempted it even though the first two skiers had fairly serious crashes, one requiring the assistance of a ski patroller.

"I come to (North American contests) to win," Chicherit said. "If I don’t win I will crash trying.

Although many of the 400 or so cheering fans that lined the bottom of Diamond Bowl for the finals have seen freeskiing competitions before, the conditions made the spectacle all the more extreme.

While Chicherit’s use of four cliff bands made him a crowd favourite, fast skiing and dangerous lines to skiers’ left of the Bowl gave Gaidet a slight edge on the second day. Chicherit finished second with a score of 79.2, and Gaidet took the Canadian title with a score of 82.4.

Although Harrison was out, two more Whistler skiers joined Leblanc in the top 10. Leif Zapf-Gilje was fifth and Mike Stevenson seventh. Locals Robin Courcelles, John Johnston, and Ryan Oakden also skied well.

For complete results, visit the IFSA Web site at www.freeskiers.org .