All Images Courtesy of Dew Tour/Ortiz
It was a beautiful, bluebird morning for the second day of Dew Tour and the ladies opened up the day’s competition lineup with the modified superpipe. Canadians Rachael Karker and PyeongChang Olympic gold medalist Cassie Sharpe took first and second, respectively, and two-time Olympic silver medalist Devin Logan snagged the bronze.
A field of eight talented women gave it their all but after three runs it was Rachael Karker who came out on top with an impressive performance. Competing among Olympic medalists and halfpipe veterans, the two-time Dew Tour competitor put down the winning score of 87.33.
“I’m just really happy I was able to put down a run, this course was really interesting to figure out. I spent the first two days [of practice] trying to ride it, trying to learn it, how to get speed for those other hits and then I was just able to put all of my tricks together in a run,” said Karker in the corral after her first-place finish. No easy feat for the reimagined superpipe this 21-year-old skier was hitting.
Rachael Karker throws down the winning run with a score of 87.33.New for this year at Dew Tour, the creative geniuses at Snow Park Technologies developed a first-of-its-kind modified superpipe. Before entering the shortened, 22-foot pipe, skiers hit a “Mister T” side-hit jump and after three hits in the pipe, skiers send it off a “tombstone” feature into a traditional slopestyle landing. Finally, competitors can either go skier’s left to hit one of two hip features or send it skier’s right to a halfpipe wall into a hip landing.
Proving to be a beast to conquer, the modified superpipe kept every competitor on their toes–whether they liked it or not. “I was super nervous coming into this,” says Sharpe, candidly, in the finish corral of the competition. “It’s not my event, I felt super out of place here but I watched Rachael put down that second run and I was like “my run is not going to beat that,” so I switched it back up, went back to what I knew and threw my cork 9s. I’m stoked to be in second place after [Rachael], she really put it down today.”
For 25-year-old Devin Logan, on the other hand, this modified superpipe was a welcomed challenge. “I’m also a slope skier so I had a lot of fun training this,” says Logan with an ear-to-ear grin near the finish corral. “It’s definitely different than any other halfpipe I’ve done but I’m excited, hopefully we’ll see some more of this in the future because this was cool. It really made you get out of your element and try some new things, do a different run. It’s always nice to switch it up, you can get a little bored in a traditional 22-foot halfpipe.”
For the final results of every ski event at Dew Tour, click here.
