Giaccio and Kingsbury shine under the lights in Ruka

A hugely successful three-day showcase of the best of freestyle skiing wrapped up on Saturday in Finnish Lapland region, where moguls competition closed out the 2021 Freestyle Ski Opening World Cup event in typically spectacular fashion. There Olivia Giaccio (USA) stormed to claim her career’s first World Cup victory, while Mikael Kingsbury came back on top of the podium in Ruka after an extremely entertaining moguls showdown.

This season marked the 12th-straight that Ruka has served as the jumping-off point for the FIS Freestyle moguls World Cup season, and as always the resort did not disappoint, with the Battery Run moguls venue once again rewarding those best able to attack its deep bumps and steep pitch.

In the women’s competition Olivia Giaccio was on fire all day long, first coming with a super solid run to clinch the top spot in qualifications, and then improving each of her runs in the finals and finishing the competition in first place with 78.51 points for her third and final attempt.

Giaccio, who missed most of the previous two World Cup campaigns while recovering from an ACL injury, looked stronger than never before, especially impressing with her jumps as well as technique on the bumps. With only one top-3 World Cup finish before competition in Ruka, Giaccio’s victory on Saturday was unexpected, but definitely well deserved. The 21-year-old skier looked very confident throughout the entire day and we can’t wait to see her performing some 1080s on the jumps once the season progress.