International athletes dominate
breckenridge » The ninth annual Dew Tour took over Breckenridge this weekend with a fresh approach to slopestyle contests, the debut of adaptive snowboard racing, a streetstyle competition on Main Street and stormy weather that challenged the Dew Tour’s new owner, The Enthusiast Network.
The media outfit TEN took a new tack for the Dew Tour, dividing the snowboard and ski slopestyle contests into separate big air and jib competitions, with athletes competing Friday on the 65-foot jump and Saturday on the boxes, walls and rails. For the first time in nine years, the Dew Tour was unable to host a superpipe contest, as the warm November hindered snowmaking at Breckenridge.
Canada’s Mark McMorris — the world’s best slopestyle snowboarder — dominated both the jump and rails, showing little sign of his arduous recovery from a broken femur last February. McMorris led a Canadian sweep of the slopestyle contest, ahead of his Olympic teammates Max Parrot and Sebastien Toutant.
California’s Jamie Anderson led the women snowboarders in Saturday’s blustery jib contest, spinning technical tricks on and off the course’s rails, followed by 16-year-old Hailey Langland and Canadian veteran Spencer O’Brien. The women will compete in the slopestyle jump competition Sunday.
On the women’s ski side, it was the Kelly Sildaru show. The 14-year-old phenom from Estonia is on a tear, winning last season’s Dew Tour and X Games’ slopestyle comps. Weighing less than 100 pounds, the acrobatic Sildaru climbed way above the start gate for Friday’s air contest to gain the speed needed for her big air exploits in a contest she won by more than 20 points. At Saturday’s rail contest, the weekend’s youngest competitor assembled what might be the most technical run ever laid down by a woman skier to claim her second Dew Tour victory.
Maggie Voisin of Montana took second, followed by Canada’s Kaya Turski.
The dread-locked Swede Henrik Harlaut won the big air contest Friday and his work on the rails Saturday crowned him slopestyle winner, followed by Norway’s Oystein Braten and Canadian Alex Beaulieu-Marchand.