Aussie slopestyle snowboarder, Tess Coady, took her first FIS World Cup winning podium at Seiser Alm in Italy overnight.
It’s the first gold for Australia in snowboard slopestyle in history – Coady had previously won her first FIS World Cup medal, and the first for Australia, a bronze at Snowmass in January 2018.
19 year old Coady took to the F-Tech Snowparks designed course in Italy after a third place qualification score and stomped her winning run with a switch blunt slide to regular on the waterfall rail, a skate-style backside lip slide on the down rail out of the butter box, and a 50/50 backside 180 melon on the flat rail.
Through the jump line Coady hit a switch backside 540, a backside 720, and a corked frontside 720 on the final jump.
Translated? She did good, real good, with a score of 73.48 that put her in first place and kept her there.
“It’s my first slopestyle since the PyeongChang 2018 Olympics, where I injured my knee” said Coady after the FIS event.
“I have so much respect for every person that’s gone through a knee injury. It’s such a long process. I had it in my mind that it would be like a year of rehab and I’d be back snowboarding, but the reality for me was that it’s taken about two years to get back. There’s a lot of hurdles to get over.
But I’m so happy I was able to persist through it all and I’m stoked to be back. I was expecting to come out here and just get some experience doing slopestyle and competing again because it’s been such a long time. I was not expecting to win.”
Katie Omerod of Great Britain took second place and Brooke Voigt of Canada, third.
