Cai and Hirano begin halfpipe season on a high with Copper Mountain wins

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“I’m happy about the win,” said Hirano after the results were in, “But I didn’t do the run that I wanted to do today. Maybe next time.”
Second place for the men went to Switzerland’s Jan Scherrer, who rebounded from falls in his first two runs to put down a banger of a third. Kicking things off with a huge backside 900 tail grab, Scherrer then went frontside double cork 1440 indy, cab dub 1080 weddle, frontside dub 1260 indy, and finally an uber-stylish alley-oop frontside 540 stalefish that would land him less than a point back of Hirano with a score of 88.50 for the Swiss rider’s fourth World Cup podium.
Finally, third place for the men went to two-time halfpipe crystal globe winner Yuto Totsuka, who earned the Japanese squad their third podium of the day with a second run that started out with a frontside double cork 1440 indy, into a cab dub 1260 weddle, then a switch backside 1080 weddle, a backside 900 weddle, and finally a frontside double cork 1260 tail for a score of 87.75.
It wasn’t all good times for the Japanese halfpipe squad, however, as Kaishu Hirano suffered a hard crash in his second run and was sledded from the pipe by the Copper Mountain medical team. We wish Kaishu all the best and a speedy recovery.
Kaishu’s older brother Ayumu Hirano, Thursday’s top qualifier, finished just off the podium in fourth place in his first major international competition since earning silver at the PyeongChang 2018 Olympic Winter Games.
The other big name kicking off his Beijing 2022 Olympic bid after stepping back from competition following the last Games was the USA’s Shaun White. Though White was unable to put down a completely clean top-to-bottom effort, his eighth-place finish in just his second competition in nearly four years proved that he remains amongst the halfpipe world’s elite.
With Copper done and dusted we now turn our attention to the new year, with the next halfpipe competition on the World Cup calendar slated to go down in Mammoth Mountain (USA) from January 6-8, 2022.
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