Park City, UT – Australia’s Matt Graham dethroned World Cup moguls leader Mikael Kingsbury of Canada at the Visa Freestyle International at Deer Valley Resort on Thursday night. Kingsbury, however, finished second on the 2002 Olympic venue Champion run to maintain his World Cup moguls lead, followed by Ludvig Fjallstrom of Sweden. In Thursday’s women’s competition, Canada’s Justine Dufour-Lapointe took her 11^th World Cup moguls victory, as Yulia Galysheva of Kazakhstan finished second and Justine’s sister, Chloe Dufour-Lapointe, finished third.

On what was likely the most jam-packed day in the history of the Deer Valley Visa Freestyle International, it looked like Kingsbury would continue his winning streak as he skied two clinical runs to lead the way to the super final. However, a small mistake in his last run would prove to be just enough of an opening for Matt Graham to squeeze through, as the 21-year-old Aussie laid down a near-flawless turning performance to beat the best in the world and earn the first World Cup victory of his career.

Graham, who has struggled somewhat this season, failing to register a top-10 result before Thursday, was thrilled with the win, draped in an Australian flag as he spoke from the finish area.

“Mikael seems to have always kind of got me. He always beats me,” Graham said. “He’s the top guy and he’s dominated the sport for four or five years, so to look up and see his final score below mine, yeah, that was a nice feeling. I’ve been waiting and hoping to get on that top podium step for a while, so it’s really satisfying.”

The men’s superfinal was a truly international affair, with six different nations represented by the six final athletes. While Jimi Salonen (FIN), Sho Endo (JPN), and Aleksey Pavlenko (RUS) all clocked solid runs, it would be 22-year-old Ludwig Fjallstrom (SWE) to step up in the night’s finale, skiing an inspired competition from front to back on his way to his first career World Cup podium.

Fjallstrom’s podium came in his 49^th World Cup competition, and marks a welcome development for a Swedish team that has been gradually coming on in recent seasons.

For the American men, Dylan Walczyk (Rochester, N.Y.) pulled off a back-full on top jump, and followed it up with a d-spin on the bottom jump, to score his best finish so far this season in 11^th. Joseph Discoe (Telluride, Colo.) threw a Johnny Mosley back flip iron cross mute grab to finish 13^th, his best finish of the season, and a huge improvement from his 39^th place result at Deer Valley last year. Thomas Rowley (Long Beach, N.Y.) was the top U.S. qualifier coming into the Final, pulling a double-full off the top jump, but he carried too much speed out of the landing, blowing out mid-course to finish 16^th.

In the women’s event, Justine Dufour-Lapointe claimed victory and snatched the yellow World Cup leader’s bib away from her sister Chloe. For a while it looked the story of the evening was going to be the performance of American Jaelin Kauf, a 19-year-old rookie with just two World Cup starts before Thursday, who put down one of the most impressive runs of the competition in the first final to lead the field into the super final.

Despite her lack of experience and the pressure she surely felt with her parents in the audience, both former pro mogul skiers, Kauf attacked her final run with gusto, skiing the fastest time of the finals while throwing two of the biggest airs to enter the super finals as the top seed. Were it not for a sketchy landing on her second jump and an imperfect finish as a result, we might be talking today about one of the quickest World Cup winners of all time.

“I did a heli up top – it felt big, felt good. The middle section felt awesome – I was skiing fast, and the course was really soft, really nice,” Kauf, of Steamboat Springs, Colo., said. “The bottom air I came in with a little bit of speed and went a little bigger than I thought, kind of sat down on the landing, but overall it felt real good.”

As it turned out on Thursday night, experience would rule once again, with Justine Dufour-Lapointe’s hard-charging superfinal run enough to edge her smooth-skiing sister Chloe and an impressive Yulia Galysheva (UKR) by the slimmest of margins. Despite a small bobble on her top jump, Justine was able to collect herself and ski the crucial middle section of the Deer Valley course cleanly and aggressively, before finishing her run off with a perfectly laid-out backflip to claim her first win of the season.

“Deer Valley is always such a hard challenge for us, but I put down three good runs today to get to the top of the podium,” Justine said following the awards ceremony, “I’m happy with my skiing today. I feel like all my hard work and all the training I’ve done finally paid off today. I felt strong, I felt balanced, I felt fast. And gaining back the yellow bib is such an amazing feeling. I remember having Hannah (Kearney) with me last season, battling for that yellow bib, and now it’s Chloe this year, and I think it’s good for me to have that battle.”

Justine’s score of 77.80 was only just enough to edge Galysheva and her crowd-favorite truck-driver frontflip final trick, while Chloe – last weekend’s winner in Calgary – was forced to both settle for third and hand her World Cup leader’s bib over to her younger sister. Galysheva finished just .05 back of Justine with a score of 77.75, while Chloe was only slightly back of Galysheva, with her score of 77.11 making for one of the tightest podium results ever seen.

Third Dufour-Lapointe sister Maxime just missed out on completing another sister sweep of the podium in fourth, while Marika Pertakhiya (RUS) in fifth and Kauf in sixth rounded out the superfinal athletes. Other American finishers included Ali Kariotis (Tiburon, Calif.) in 14^th, Nessa Dziemian (East Hampstead, N.H.) in 15^th and Olivia Giaccio (Vail, Colo.) finished 16^th.

The Visa Freestyle International continues Friday with aerials competition, as the mogul skiers return Saturday for the dual event, with finals once again under the lights.

OFFICIAL RESULTS
FIS Freestyle Ski World Cup
Visa Freestyle International – Deer Valley Resort, UT – Feb. 4, 2016

Men’s Moguls

Women’s Moguls