{"id":182831,"date":"2025-12-14T03:59:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-14T03:59:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/182831\/"},"modified":"2025-12-14T03:59:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-14T03:59:10","slug":"kiwis-fin-melville-ives-luke-harrold-claim-world-cup-freeski-halfpipe-quinella-in-china","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/182831\/","title":{"rendered":"Kiwis Fin Melville Ives, Luke Harrold claim World Cup freeski halfpipe quinella in China"},"content":{"rendered":"

He said he hadn\u2019t trained well before the event.<\/p>\n

\u201cI had to swap my run with about 10 minutes left of training and ended up taping my pants to try and get more speed and skiing in a T-shirt, even though it\u2019s freezing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Fourteen freeskiers qualified for the two-run final, with Melville Ives putting down a huge first run, registering a 90.00 score, which stood as the day\u2019s highest. He matched it with his second run.<\/p>\n

Harrold, a 17-year-old from Lake H\u0101wea, near W\u0101naka, was the last athlete to drop into each run, as the top qualifier. He was second after the first run, with 88.00 points. He amped that up to 89.00, but couldn\u2019t eclipse Melville Ives.<\/p>\n

The win was Melville Ives\u2019 second at a World Cup, after victory in Canada in February, while it was Harrold\u2019s second podium, after finishing second at Secret Garden in 2023, aged just 15.<\/p>\n

Hunter Hess of the USA finished third.<\/p>\n

In the women\u2019s event, Mischa Thomas, 17, from Auckland, was seventh in her debut World Cup event.<\/p>\n

China\u2019s Eileen Gu, the reigning Olympic champion, took out the women\u2019s event for her 19th World Cup win with a score of 91.75.<\/p>\n

The event came down to Gu\u2019s final run as Great Britain\u2019s Zoe Atkin sat in the lead with a best score of 90.25 from her two runs. <\/p>\n

Gu, who posted an 85.25 in her first attempt, wasn\u2019t to be denied, however, with an impressive second run seeing her top the podium. <\/p>\n

\u2013 RNZ<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"He said he hadn\u2019t trained well before the event. \u201cI had to swap my run with about 10…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":182832,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[6028,607,2741,115960,10542,8231,1645,115957,71,115958,115956,78,103211,807,102883,110658,111,139,69,115959,105580,8466,213,102,20065,377],"class_list":["post-182831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-champion","tag-china","tag-claim","tag-compatriot","tag-cup","tag-event","tag-fin","tag-freeski","tag-from","tag-halfpipe","tag-harrold","tag-in","tag-ives","tag-kiwis","tag-luke","tag-melville","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-quinella","tag-reigning","tag-second","tag-sports","tag-with","tag-wnaka","tag-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=182831"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/182831\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/182832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=182831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=182831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=182831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}