Park City, UT –Dylan Ferguson, of Amesbury, Mass., jumped his way through three finals rounds to come in second at the Visa Freestyle International Saturday night at Deer Valley Resort, his first career FIS Freestyle World Cup podium. Zongyang Jia of China was the men’s winner, while Mengtao Xu led a Chinese sweep of the women’s podium.

It was Ferguson’s first podium in 30 career World Cup aerials starts. In a trial of the new Olympic format, the field was qualified to 12, then down to eight and finally a Super Finals of four – with scores reset with each round and no jump allowed twice. Ferguson’s jump package included a full double full-full (three flips, four twists) in round one, a double full full-full (three flips, four twists) in round two and a full full full (three flips, three twists) in the Super Final, where Jia took the men’s win with a huge 128.96 jump.

“I’m just going to embrace this moment. I’ve got all my friends and family here and I appreciate everyone who came out,” said Ferguson. “I really just wanted to come into this week and have a good time and put some sweet jumps down and that’s how it went and I’m so stoked. I’ve been in the top-10 a few times and my coach said, ‘Deer Valley is the one – this is your spot’ and I earned it I think.

“It’s a lot of strategy. You have to watch the other guys and see what they do and I watched everyone put really good jumps down so I knew I had to do the same thing and it worked out for me,” he concluded.

Ferguson finished ahead of Canadian aerialist Olivier “Ollywood” Rochon, who earned his third career World Cup podium result with the bronze medal to keep a firm grasp on the yellow World Cup leader’s bib with 326 points, ahead of Jia who has amassed 256 thus far this season. Gatineau, Quebec’s Rochon, who had been suffering from a head cold all week and wasn’t his usual energetic self, said he was exhausted after training and competing most of the day.

“On my qualification jump landing I caught an edge and lost a ski, but managed to ski out and ended up qualifying 6^th,” said Rochon. “Then in the round of 12 my buckle broke when I was doing up my boots just before my jump. It was my most important buckle that keeps my foot in place. So, I had trouble on my landing of that jump. I was thinking I was going home — but I managed to sneak through to the round of eight when two guys who went after me crashed.”

And his luck didn’t end there, his coaches were able to quickly repair his buckle before the next round. “I felt like a racing car with new tires,” said Rochon, who used up his more difficult tricks and earlier rounds and was forced to execute a relatively easy full, full, full (three back flips with three complete rotations) for the final jump.

On the women’s side, China swept the podium with Mengtao Xu, Shuang Cheng and Fanyu Chen landing in gold, silver and bronze, respectively. Alli Lee was the only American woman to make it into finals, finishing 10th, while the Canadian team had no women entered in Saturday night’s competition.

“This is my sixth World Cup start and this season I went in not really expecting to make many finals just hoping to do my best and get the experience,” acknowledged Lee. “This is my fourth out of five World Cups this season making finals so I’m very excited for this.”

OFFICIAL RESULTS
FIS Freestyle World Cup
Deer Valley Resort – Park City, UT – Feb. 3, 2012
Aerials

Men:

Women: