Weather Shines on Brown and Herman at Breck

BRECKENRIDGE, CO (Jan. 10) – A potent storm brought heavy snow and limited visibility to the Sprint U.S. Grand Prix at Breckenridge, forcing a jury decision to cancel the Visa U.S. Freeskiing slopestyle skiing finals scheduled for Friday. According to FIS Freestyle rules, qualification results stand in as official results, putting local skier Bobby Brown (Breckenridge, CO) on top for the men with Keri Herman (Bloomington, MN) taking the win for the women. Halfpipe finals are scheduled for Sunday, where the competition is tight for spots on the first U.S. Olympic team for halfpipe skiing.

HIGHLIGHTS

• A potent storm brought heavy snow and limited visibility to the Sprint U.S. Grand Prix at Breckenridge, forcing a jury decision to cancel the Visa U.S. Freeskiing slopestyle skiing finals scheduled for Friday.
• According to FIS Freestyle rules, qualification results stand in as official results, putting local skier Bobby Brown (Breckenridge, CO) on top for the men with Keri Herman (Bloomington, MN) taking the win for the women.
• Sweden’s Jesper Tjader and Kai Mahler of Switzerland finished second and third for the men while Swede Emma Dahlstrom took second for the women.
• Devin Logan (West Dover, VT) finished third, moving her to the top of the women’s Olympic qualification standings and meeting Olympic qualification criteria with her second of two required podiums.
• Nick Goepper (Lawrenceburg, IN), Tom Wallisch (Pittsburgh, PA), Gus Kenworthy (Telluride, CO), and Alex Schlopy (Park City, UT) finish fifth, sixth, seventh and ninth respectively.
• While they all would have preferred to ski a full final, the top athletes agreed that there was too much at stake going into the Olympics to risk injury in the inclement weather.
• Brown’s qualifier run: Switch 270 on 270 off on the down rail, misty off the up rail, switch double cork 900 Japan, rightside double cork 1080 mute, 270 rodeo 450 out, rodeo on the knoll, switch rightside 900 mute and leftside double cork 1080.
• Goepper is the only U.S. slopestyle athlete who has mathematically clinched a spot on the team, so the last two competitions at the Visa U.S. Freeskiing Grand Prix at Park City will showcase an intense, down-to-the-wire battle for Olympic team spots.
• Halfpipe finals are scheduled for Sunday at Breckenridge, where the competition is tight for spots on the first U.S. Olympic team for halfpipe skiing.

QUOTES
Bobby Brown
I was ready to go today. I wanted to ski. They made their call and I’m definitely excited, but it’s kind of a weird feeling, winning out of qualifiers. So I’m going to take it with a grain of salt and move on to the next one. I’m feeling good. I’m just going to keep doing what I’m doing and having fun and see how it goes.

Conditions are gnarly. It’s super windy and it just wasn’t safe to be hitting it. We all tried at different points of the day and it just wasn’t going to go. Unfortunately it’s a good day for pow skiing not park skiing so we were just trying to get out alive. It’s unfortunate we couldn’t run the whole entire contest.

Keri Herman
We all worked really hard in qualifiers and we had a lot better weather that day and everyone put down some good runs. So I think everyone’s happy with the result and where everybody is standing. It’s great to be up on the podium. I’m just really happy that nobody got hurt today and we’re going strong to the Olympics.

Devin Logan
We all decided in the morning that we were not going to ski. It wasn’t safe for us to do it. With next month coming up, it meant more to us to keep our knees and ankles intact and go into the Olympics strong than trying to risk something. It was more of a safety reason that we didn’t ski today

RESULTS
Official Men’s Results
Official Women’s Results

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