Marino and Sharpe cap epic Calgary Snow Rodeo week with slopestyle wins

“I’m feeling pretty good about my riding right now,” Marino said from the finish are after her victory lap, “This is a super fun course. I had a blast this week riding this. We got a ton of time on course to feel it out and get comfortable on it and put some stuff down. I wanted to go backside 1080 on my final lap but I got a little too hyped up, maybe went a little too big on my cab 900, maybe landed a little weird, so…I would have loved to have got a back 10 in there but oh well, there will be other opportunities for that.”

Joining Marino on the podium were a pair of Canadians, with Laurie Blouin landing in second place with a score of 76.41 and Jasmine Baird making a strong return to competition after a brief injury break to earn a third place finish, just back of Blouin with a score of 76.21.

Blouin’s Sunday podium was her third in three Snow Rodeo competitions since the slopestyle World Cup returned to Calgary in 2019/20 after an almost 10 year absence from the calendar, while Baird’s podium was her third of the 2022/23 season, to go along with her third place finish at the Big Air Chur and her win at the Edmonton Style Experience big air.

Not only did Marino take over the slopestyle yellow World Cup leaders’ bib on Sunday, with 253 points she also moved up into third place on the Park & Pipe overall standings behind Japanese riders Mitsuki Ono (360 points) and Iwabuchi (322 points).

SHARPE’S EPIC SECOND RUN EARNS FIRST SLOPESTYLE WORLD CUP WIN

While it was a big morning for the Canadian squad in the women’s competition, things got even better in the men’s competition when 27-year-old Darcy Sharpe put down one of the finest runs of his already impressive career to claim his first career World Cup slopestyle win.

Leading things off in his second run with a gap switch backside 270 lipslide on the down-flat-down rail, Sharpe then went gap switch hardway 270 on to 270 off on the flat down, and then into a frontside lipslide 270 out, which he gapped from the rainbow rail takeoff over to the long downrail.

Into the jumps Sharpe put the hammer down, first with a frontside triple cork 1440 weddle, and then a backside triple cork 1440 weddle, before finishing things off with a 50-50 to nollie backside rodeo 720 weddle out on the cannon rail.