Stoneham (QC), Canada – Japanese snowboarders positively dominated the men’s halfpipe contest at the 2011 LG Snowboard FIS World Cup stop at Stoneham on Friday, with Ryo Aono leading a podium sweep. Japan also placed Haruna Matsumoto in third on the women’s podium, behind China’s Xuetong Cai and Holly Crawford of Australia.nThe contest was delayed an hour due to intense fog after continuing rainfall throughout the day. Aono, a former World Champion in men’s halfpipe, took the victory under the lights at the Stoneham superpipe, followed by teammates Taku Hiraoka, Kazuumi Fujita and Kosuke Hosokawa in second, third and fourth places.
“It’s nice that I was able to win here,” said Aono, who had placed ninth at the last Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver and took over the World Cup lead with Friday’s victory. “I didn’t really expect this final to happen as the weather conditions didn’t seem to clear up at all.”
No American riders started Friday’s halfpipe contest in Stoneham. Canadian snowboarders Brad Martin of Ancaster, Ontario and Justin Lamoureux of Squamish, British Columbia, followed in fifth and sixth place, respectively.
“I feel pretty good. I would have liked to finish on the podium. I was pretty happy to land a clean run, but unfortunately I touched the pipe on my last hit in the second run and lost some valuable points there,” Martin explained. “I had lots of fun in Stoneham, and this pipe usually treats me well. It’s pretty fun when the crowd is going wild. It really hypes you up, and pumps you up to go bigger.”
Martin is still riding with an ankle injury that was sustained while training for the World Championships in La Molina, Spain. “The ankle still hurts, but I gotta ride through it the next little bit, and make it better, I guess.”
Crawford, who missed the podium in China last week by placing fourth, was the only rider to prevent an all-Asian sweep of the Stoneham halfpipe. By nailing frontside lien, backside air, frontside 720 indy to cab 720 lien, frontside 540 and a backside air to finish things off, the Aussie girl jumped on the women’s podium in second.
“I’m pretty happy. I was hoping to get a podium and this is what I did,” Crawford said. “I definitely had a little bit of jetlag in China last week but here we all got jetlagged because we all flew over from China.”
OFFICIAL RESULTS
LG Snowboard FIS World Cup
Stoneham, Quebec, Canada – Feb. 18, 2011
Halfpipe
Women:
1 CAI Xuetong CHN
2 CRAWFORD Holly AUS
3 MATSUMOTO Haruna JPN
Men:
1 AONO Ryo JPN
2 HIRAOKA Taku JPN
3 FUJITA Kazuumi JPN