Laffont and Kingsbury take wins on Day 1 in Almaty

Second spot on the day went to USA’s Jaelin Kauf, while her teammate Tess Johnson rounded out the podium in third place, for her first top-3 finish in 2022/23.

Despite opting out not to participate in the World Cup finals, after somehow a disappointing performance two weeks ago at the World Championships in Georgia, Jakara Anthony (AUS) finished the season on top of the single moguls World Cup standing, consequently claiming her career’s third World Cup title.

Over the course of six moguls competitions in 2022/23 Anthony claimed four win as well as one runner-up spot and finished the season with 480 points.

Friday’s winner Laffont finished the season in second place with 430 points, while racking up one victory and four top-3 finishes. However, with Anthony not competing in Almaty, and Kawamura sidelined due to her ankle injury, Laffont will be looking to take home some World Cup crystal globes as well, as she sits comfortably on top of both the dual moguls and overall moguls rankings. 

With a superb performance on Friday, Jaelin Kauf managed to jumped into third place as she rounded out the women’s 2022/23 moguls podium, earning 341 points on the strength of her three top-3 spots in the last three moguls events.

Moving over to the men’s side of things, it was all about Mikael Kingsbury. After securing his career’s 22nd crystal globe already back in February at Deer Valley, the King of Moguls came into Friday’s competition with no pressure and only one goal in his mind – to showcase his best skiing. And that’s exactly what he did, leaving all his competition far behind in the super final. Kingsbury kept his composure clean through the bumps and sent it deep off the jumps, including a spectacular cork 720 truck driver at the bottom air, which he performed for the very first time in competition.

Unsurprisingly with this top-notch run Kingsbury won the competition in Almaty, claiming his seventh victory in 2022/23, taking home the moguls title with 540 points, while also securing the overall moguls World Cup crystal globe in the process. Now he only needs one more solid result to take everything there is to win on the 2022/23 World Cup tour and repeat his moguls hat-trick from last year.