A switch 1080 earns Maria Bagge victory at the Nine Queens big air final
After an exciting week of female freestyle skiing action, the Nine Queens event wrapped up with the big air competition finals on Friday, 25th March, in Serfaus-Fiss-Ladis, Austria.
In the final battle, it was Sweden’s Maria Bagge who managed to clinch the win. Canada’s Kaya Turski finished in second place. America’s Keri Herman and Sweden’s Emma Dahlstrom ended up in a tie for third place.
The competition started with 14 skiers participating in a jam session that went on for almost an hour. By the end of the session, seven skiers found themselves advancing to the next stage of the competition: the final.
Surprisingly, Canada’s 28-year-old Sarah Burke failed to secure herself a place in the final. The skier seemed to be in excellent form throughout the week, pulling off cork 900s and cork 1080s during photo shoots, but for some reason she failed to exhibit
the same level of class in Friday’s contest.
The final turned out to be a real exciting action-packed session. The level of riding was top notch with the skiers getting bolder with every passing second. What started off with switch 720s soon moved on to forward 900s and switch 900s. If that was not
enough to melt the ice around them, the ladies started attempting switch 1080s.
The first skier to successfully land a switch 1080 at the final was the 22-year-old Turski. She had ended up making history as no female free skier had landed a switch 1080 successfully in a competition before.
Once Turski unleashed the sensational trick, the 24-year-old Bagge followed suit. Her trick impressed the judges more as she held her mute grab a bit longer than Turski did. This gave her an edge and allowed her to triumph over the female who had just made
history a few moments earlier.
“It was really fun up there. All the girls were killing it,” said Bagge, who won an online video competition to qualify for the event. “After the first switch 9 I did in qualification, I thought maybe it was possible to try a switch 10. And then I saw Kaya
do a switch 10 and she landed it and that inspired me a lot.”
The final showed just how much progress the sport had made in the past week. The ladies were attempting tricks that they had never attempted before. The confidence was high as the female skiers made the best of the opportunity provided to them by the Nine
Queen’s organizer, Nico Zacek.
“There was nothing smaller than a 720 today. It was insane,” said Ashley Battersby, who finished sixth after stomping a switch 9 for the first time and nearly landing a switch 10. “I think it's huge for us because we've been fighting for equality for a very
long time.”
Zacek was glad to see the event turn out to be a success. It was exactly as he had hoped when he brought the girls together and placed them in a beautiful location equipped with a 19-meter kicker in the centre of a chateau and other such features. He expected
the girls to progress the show and that is exactly what the girls did.
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