Friday, April 13

The 2001 World Skiing Invitational Orage Big Air

freezeonline.com

April marks the end of the ski season for most of us but not for 20 of the best jibbers in the world who are here in Whistler for the TELUS World Ski & Snowboard Festival. Skiers went huge for the record crowd of 6,000 at the base of Whistler Mountain and $50,000 Canadian in prize money. Canadians swept the top three at Saturday?s Orage Big Air with Vincent Dorian throwing a switch 900 tail grab to take first place, J.F. Cusson stomped a rodeo 900 indy grab to take second and 17-year-old David Crichton took third with a d-spin 900.

David Crichton

Soft snow conditions made for a difficult landing hill but Crichton had no problem sticking the landing of every jump and easliy led the competiition throughout the day until the last jump. The finals were a one jump showdown between Vinnie, JF and David and everyone knew that they had to jump perfect to win. Vinnie came down and stomped a perfect jump raising the standard to a new level. Crichton knew that he had to go bigger and spun to hard causing him to miss the landing and giving Vinnie the win. Cusson stepped it up huge and as of recently seems to have found a new charge in his jumping and when asked about what the win meant, Cusson simply proclaimed (with words and performance), "I?m back!"

JF and Vinnie.

RESULTS

Results Rank Bib Name Best 1 1 DORION Vincent (CAN) 52.5 2 20 CUSSON JF (CAN) 50.5 3 14 CRICHTON David (CAN) 34.2 4 8 THOMAS Rex (CAN) 41.9 5 5 BELANGER Phil (CAN) 34.2 6 18 JOHNSON CR (USA) 23.4 7 3 MERCON Nick (USA) 23.2 8 4 WOODS Andrew (USA) 22.4 9 2 SUTHERLAND Toben (CAN) 21.9 10 6 LAROSE Phil (CAN) 21.6 11 13 SPENCE Steele (USA) 21.6 12 11 STERBENZ Matt (USA) 21.5 13 10 BORONOWSKI Anthony (CAN) 21.4 14 19 RICKETTS Myles (CAN) 21.4 15 15 TURPIN Chris (CAN) 21.1 16 12 NUNEZ Mauro (SPA) 19.2 17 16 PAQUETTE Mathieu (CAN) 19.1 18 9 BURKE Sarah (CAN) 17.1 19 17 EASLEY Boyd (USA) 13.3 20 7 HIBBERT Scott (CAN) 12.8

Vinnie Dorion switch cork 900