Ryan Stassel wins FIS World Championship slopestyle contest
Courtesy photo |
Olympian Ryan Stassel of the Auburn Ski Club snowboard team dominated the slopestyle field to take home his first ever FIS World Championship title in Kreischerg, Austria, on Wednesday.
In a best-of-three-run format, the Anchorage, Alaska, native showed the world that he meant business on Kreischberg’s six-feature course, earning the two highest scores of the day.
Stassel was the only rider in the field to land three 1260s, including a frontside double cork 1260 off the first jump, which earned him one of the highest scores in World Championships history (97.50).
“I’m speechless,” Stassel said after the event. “I have been working on that run for a long time and it feels really good to finally pull it all together here at the World Championships.”
Stassel’s performance was more than enough to beat out 2013 World Champion Roppe Tonterri of Finland, who took silver.
“It was a great win for Ryan,” said Dylan Omlin, Stassel’s coach at Auburn Ski Club. “After the Sochi Olympics and not riding as well as he would have liked to, it was good for him to win against some of the same athletes. It has been a long process and a lot of hard work for Ryan to get to this level. It’s great to see it starting to pay off.”
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