Australian snowboard rising star Ally Hickman has continued the team’s standout form, becoming the second Australian teenager in as many days to claim a first World Cup podium, finishing third in the final big air event of the season in Steamboat—just her eighth World Cup start.
At 16 years and one month, the Sydney teenager is now the second-youngest Australian World Cup medallist, trailing only Indra Brown, who claimed bronze in the freeski halfpipe in China at 15 years and 10 months.
It caps an exceptional weekend for Australia in Olympic qualification events, with five World Cup medals collected: Bree Walker’s gold in monobob, Brown’s freeski halfpipe bronze, double snowboard cross bronze from Josie Baff and Adam Lambert, and Hickman’s big air bronze. The medal haul could grow again tonight with the mixed team snowboard cross event still to come in Cervinia.
Hickman carried strong recent form into Steamboat, following a seventh-place finish two weeks ago in China. She qualified for the final in first place on Friday with a huge score of 93 points for a frontside 1080 with double mute and tailgrab.
In the three-run final, where the two best scores count, Hickman opened with the same jump from qualifying, scoring 88 points, and then had two attempts at a backside 720 melon grab, performing both jumps well earning 72.75 on her first attempt and improving to 74.25 on her final jump. Her two-jump combined score of 162.25 points secured the bronze medal behind winner Japan’s Miyabi Onitsuka, on 174 points, and South Korea’s Seungeun Yu in second with 173.25.
Also competing in the women’s final for Australia was 21-year-old Meila Stalker, in seventh place on 145 points in her second finals appearance of the season.
Hickman’s podium finish moves her to fourth overall in the final World Cup Big Air standings, Stalker is seventh and 2018 Olympic slopestyle bronze medallist Tess Coady sits in 12th. Coady did not compete in Steamboat, opting for training in Europe.
In the men’s event, Australians Jesse Parkinson (27th), Joshua Robertson-Hahn (33rd) and Valentino Guseli (46th) missed the finals.
The focus now shifts to the slopestyle discipline and the final World Cup and Olympic qualification events, kicking off the new year in Aspen with the next competition on January 10.
