Park City, UT – Maxim Gustik of Belarus took his first World Cup win for the men on Friday night in the the Visa Freestyle International’s aerials competition at Utah’s Deer Valley Resort, with Mengtao Xu of China winning by an impressive 36-point margin in the women’s.

Long Valley, N.J. teen Mike Rossi put together three clean jumps to score a career first podium result in third after executing a full-full-full in the Super Finals, just two weeks after the 18-year-old cracked the top 10 in Lake Placid.

“I didn’t expect this at all! Going into it I just wanted to land my jumps, that’s always my goal,” said Rossi. “When I landed my full – double full – full, I just squeaked into the next round and the same thing happened with the super final. My plan never changed through any of the rounds and that really paid off.

“I still consider myself a rookie in the sport,” Rossi acknowledged. “The fact that I have a World Cup podium hasn’t even set in yet! This is my first year competing on the entire World Cup circuit. This podium gives me so much confidence because I know what I’m capable of.”

“Today was an unbelievable day for Mike. This new format is like a chess game, it’s very strategic and that makes it a lot of fun. It’s all about where you qualify. You have to adjust your game plan each round,” added Todd Ossian, Aerial Head Coach for the U.S. Ski Team. “We are all so happy for Mike, he’s a young athlete with a huge career ahead of him. And no better place for this podium to happen than at Deer Valley.”

Travis Gerrits, of Milton, Ontario, was the only Canadian National Freestyle Team member to advance past the qualification round, taking the silver medal and his career second World Cup podium.

“I’m on top of the world,” said a beaming Gerrits, who scored 115.83 with a full, full, full, in the super final. “There’s not much I could have done better today and to get second place with what I did was awesome.”

The new World Cup format mirroring the Olympic format had 12 men and women in a qualifying round, cutting to eight in finals and then four in super finals. It was a grueling night for the athletes because to land on the podium, competitors had to perform four jumps in total (one qualification jump, then a round of 12, a round of eight and a super final round of four). To make it even more difficult, in this format jumpers are not allowed to repeat trick combinations in any of the three final rounds. Third after the first jump, Dylan Ferguson, of Amesbury, Mass., just missed the finals cut and was fifth.

On the women’s side, Xu took her fourth World Cup win, and fifth podium, of the season with a score of 116.9. Xin Zhang of China was second and Laura Peel of Australia took the bronze. First jump leader Emily Cook, of Belmont, Mass., touched down on her second jump and finished seventh. Park City’s own Maddie Olsen was ninth, followed by teammate Kiley McKinnon, of Madison, Conn., in tenth.

“It’s a little tricky with some wind up there. Honestly, I was flipping fairly slowly, so I thought I was perfect, but I was just a little bit off, just a small mistake,” said Cook. “But obviously in this sport you can’t make small mistakes!”

OFFICIAL RESULTS
FIS Freestyle World Cup
Visa Freestyle International – Deer Valley Resort – Park City, UT – Feb. 2, 2013
Aerials

Men

Women