PARK CITY, UT (Feb. 3) - Dylan Ferguson (Amesbury, MA) jumped his way through three finals rounds to come in second at the Visa Freestyle International at Deer Valley Resort, his first career FIS Freestyle World Cup podium. Zongyang Jia of China was the men’s winner. Mengtao Xu led a Chinese sweep of the women’s podium.
HIGHLIGHTS
- Dylan Ferguson took career best second at Deer Valley Resort in front of his home crowd
- 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.
- Teammate Scotty Bahrke (Squaw Valley, CA) finished 6th
- Alli Lee was the only woman to make it into finals finishing 10th
- Jia Zongyang of China took the men’s win with a huge 128.96 jump in the superfinals
- The Hurricane tow-rope was dedicated to Jeret "Speedy" Peterson prior to finals
- Dual moguls are on tap for tomorrow night to finish off the Visa Freestyle International
QUOTES
Dylan Ferguson
I'm just going to embrace this moment. I've got all my friends and family here and I appreciate everyone who came out.
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.
Scotty Bahrke
Being home at Deer Valley – there's no better crowd. I've got my whole family here and all of my friends. You can really feel the support behind you. It's pretty amazing under the lights.
I felt like Speedy was jumping with me all week. All the support is just awesome.
This format is a little wild. We've been up here all day. The crowd seems to dig it. It makes us have a big bag of tricks that you have to land to go on.
Alli Lee
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. This is my fourth out of five World Cups this season making finals so I'm very excited for this.
Todd Schirman
For this to happen at Deer Valley is just as special as it could be. Especially with our honoring of Speedy tonight, it's just absolutely amazing. I'm so proud of all of them tonight.
Alli Lee had a personal best. Scotty had the best jump of the entire season.
There was something special in the air tonight. Everybody trained well but the biggest thing is using the strategy. Dylan used his two big jumps in the first two rounds and put himself in a good spot and he performed one of his best full-full-fulls in training today and stepped it up there in the finals. It was absolutely amazing.
RESULTS
Official Results
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