Ski Men: 1/ Stefan Hausl (AUT) 2/ Reine Barkered (SWE) 3/ Matthias Haunholder (AUT)
Snowboard Men: 1/ Mitch Toelderer (AUT) 2/ Max Zipser (AUT) 3/ James Stentiford (UK)

Fieberbrunn, Austria – March 12, 2011 – As the fifth and last event prior to the big season finale in Verbier, Switzerland next weekend, every rider who dropped into the 600-meter Wildseeloder face at the Swatch Big Mountain Fieberbrunn by Nissan had something on the line. Some needed to score enough points to get an invitation to Verbier while those at the top of the ranking were going for the win in order to break into the lead for the overall title. Today four Austrians dominated the podium with Stefan Hausl (AUT) and Mitch Toelderer (AUT) taking the top step with solid, exciting runs down the challenging face.

Faced with a long, demanding venue with less than perfect snow, today’s event was notable due to the riders who played it safe by focusing on fluid lines to preserve their position in the rankings. Others, on the other hand charged the course with everything they had in order to score the critical points that would boost them towards the top of the rankings.

Ski Men
Austrian rider Stefan Hausl was clearly one of the latter, charging hard, and took the lead early with a crowd-pleasing line that started with a cleanly landed 15-meter air, and followed with a fast and fluid line from top to bottom ending with a big, old-school “Spread Eagle” trick at the bottom. Reine Barkered (SWE) came in second followed by Fieberbrunn’s native son Matthias Haunholder (AUT).

Click here for full results of Swatch Big Mountain Fieberbrunn 2011 by Nissan.

Stefan Hausl (AUT): “It was a perfect day. The conditions were very difficult, like spring conditions but we gambled a little bit and in the end most of the Austrians made the right decisions for this venue. This is my first FWT victory and after I placed third in Sochi I’m completely stoked. This face is perfectly tailored for my riding style: at the beginning it’s very steep and difficult with big rocks, then there’s a section where I could show some speed, then, in the last section, I tried to two or three fun things.”

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Overall Ranking
The men’s overall ranking has been amazingly close all season long and following Hausl’s win today, (his first of the season), we now have our fifth overall leader after as many contests. Hausl (4300 points) is a mere five points ahead of last week’s leader Samuel Anthamatten (SUI, 4295 points) with Aurélien Ducroz (FRA, 4180 points) dropping from second to third.

Click here for overall rankings prior to the finals in Verbier. The first 13 skiers qualify for Verbier.