Big days for USA and Japan in busy Saturday at Mammoth Mountain

However, according to the man himself, he felt he had more to give.

“To come back to Mammoth and win it again, I’m really psyched,” said Gerard, “I really wanted to do the 16 to 16 combo (on the jumps), but it just didn’t line up. Speed was changing each run. We’re at that time of the day when the sun starts setting behind the mountains and all that. But man, I couldn’t be happier, honestly.”

Second place behind Gerard with a score of 76.56 was top qualifier van der Velden, as the 21-year-old earned his first career podium and the first FIS Snowboard Park & Pipe podium for a Dutch man in almost a decade.

Rounding out the men’s podium in third with a score of 73.44 was Tiarn Collins, giving the New Zealand contingent their second podium of the day, and giving Collins the fourth World Cup podium of his career.

With a fifth-place finish, Canada’s Sebastien Toutant would maintain his lead on the men’s slopestyle World Cup standings.

HALFPIPE RECAP

As with slopestyle earlier in the day, the halfpipe competition at Mammoth saw an intense programme of men’s qualifications immediately followed by women’s and men’s finals. While the temperature at the halfpipe was dropping throughout the night, an enthusiastic crowd on hand kept the vibes high despite a last-minute pullout of competition from the USA’s Shaun White.

What White’s DNS means for his Olympic hopes is still to be determined, but even without snowboarding’s biggest star in the house there was lots to love about Saturday nights action in the Mammoth superpipe.

Taking her first career World Cup win on the women’s side of things was 20-year-old Ruki Tomita, who put down a super clean, super stylish top-to-bottom run for a score of 89.40.

Tomita started things off with big frontside air, into a backside 900, then a frontside 720 indy, a cab 720 weddle, and finally a frontside 900 melon to finish things off and take the victory.