Kaya Turski
Park City, UT (Feb. 3, 2011) — Canada added another medal to its FIS Freestyle World Championships cache with Montreal’s Kaya Turski earning the silver medal in women’s Slopestyle.
Slopestyle is a veritable obstacle course of rails, jumps and other features – much like you would find in a terrain park at most ski resorts — that athletes navigate while executing a series of exciting and challenging tricks.
Today’s event marked the discipline’s World Championships debut and was actually a late inclusion into Worlds after the International Olympic Committee indicated it was seriously considering adding the discipline to the program for Sochi in 2014.
The 22-year-old Turski is a former freestyle rollerblader who turned to skiing about six years ago. She posted a best-of-two-run score of 41.70 in today’s finals, second to Australia’s Anna Segal who scored 43.40. Keri Herman of the US earned the bronze medal at 41.00, edging Canadian Kim LaMarre (Lac Beauport, Que.) to fourth at 39.10.
Slopestyle is judged by a panel of five judges who look at the ‘overall impression’ of the run; each judge allocates a score out of 10 and the five scores are added together.
Turski, coming off a gold at X Games last week, said, “I’m very happy, I landed my run and I skied how I wanted to ski. It’s an honor to be part of the first ever World Championships for slopestyle and I hope we put on a good show and I hope that the IOC is stoked on us and that we’ll go forward to the Olympics.”
For her part, LaMarre was disappointed with her fourth place showing, but was excited to be part of the event.
No Canadians advanced to today’s men’s final, The USA took gold and silver with Alex Schlopy scoring 41.8 and Same Carlson scoring 41.5. Russ Henshaw of Australia was third at 41.20.
Of course, the big question here is whether slopestyle, and its halfpipe cousin, will make the grade with the IOC in their quest for a berth in 2014; and whether journalists across the world will have to learn a whole new language that includes ‘jibbing’, ‘disasters’, ‘butter boxes’ and the like.
FIS Secretary General Sarah Lewis said that FIS remains “optimistic” about both slopestyle and halfpipe’s inclusion to the Games.
IOC Slopestyle and Halfpipe Observer Walter Siebert commented that he found the Park City event, “very well organized” and explained that one of the key focuses for the IOC is on the judging format for the new disciplines.
Siebert acknowledged that the IOC does like objectively won sports, sports that rely on time or distance to determine results, but said that does not count out judged sports. To this end he said, “The IOC has quite a lot of judged sports and I think over the past 15 years (International Federations) have improved tremendously when it comes to judging sports and I think we will see less and less controversies during the Games and the World Championships as we go forward. But it is true that the IIOC looks closely to how the sports are judged because we want to be sure that the field of play is fair for everybody.”
Siebert said he expects the IOC to make a final decision this April, in order to give teams three years to prepare if necessary.
Freestyle World Championship action continues tomorrow with the Aerials finals.
For the full web/TV schedule in Canada, go to: http://www.freestyleski.com/en/index.php/2011/televisionwebcast-schedule-for-world-championships/
For more information or to arrange for interviews, contact CFSA Media Relations Manager Kelley Korbin at: kelleykorbin@freestyleski.com.
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Full results from today’s event are available at: http://www.fis-ski.com/uk/604/1228.html?event_id=28104&cal_suchsector=FS
For more information or to arrange for interviews contact CFSA Media Relations Manager Kelley Korbin.
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About the Canadian Freestyle Ski Association
The Canadian Freestyle Ski Association is the governing body in Canada for the sport of Freestyle Skiing. Our mission is to develop, in a safe, fun and ethical manner, Olympic and World Champions in all disciplines of the sport of Freestyle Skiing