\u201cI had such a good training, so I said to my coach, \u2018I am going to go hammers for my first run\u2019 and I was stoked, I can\u2019t believe it held,\u201d Melville Ives said.<\/p>\n
He was joined on the podium by two Team USA athletes, with Hunter Hess in second place and three-time Winter Olympian Nick Goepper in third.<\/p>\n
The result also means the reigning world halfpipe champion now leads the standings for the 2025\/26 Freeski Halfpipe World Cup Tour and was presented the yellow bib.<\/p>\n
\u201cI am just trying to have as much fun as possible when I\u2019m skiing and skiing is my happy place,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe halfpipe is like a blank canvas and you\u2019re just like an artist with a paintbrush.\u201d<\/p>\n
Snowboarder Dane Menzies also secured a podium finish at Aspen, with a third place in the Snowboard Slopestyle World Cup, marking his first World Cup podium.<\/p>\n
Qualifying through to the finals in 10th position, Menzies put down a clutch performance on the first of his two finals runs, stomping back-to-back 1620s on the jumps and executing near-flawless technical rail tricks to impress the judges.<\/p>\n
Sitting in the top spot after run one and looking to up the ante, Menzies unfortunately had a bobble on the second rail feature, resulting in a throwaway score.<\/p>\n
With nine athletes still to drop in, it was a nerve-wracking wait to see if his score would hold for podium position, but it did.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt means a lot to make it on the podium, after getting fourth here last year and consistently making finals, but not getting on the box,\u201d he said. \u201cI have been working super hard for this one, really trying to get more consistent and dialled in on my rails and cleanliness on the jumps, so I am happy it paid off\u201d<\/p>\n
Aucklander Mischa Thomas, 17, competed in the women\u2019s Freeski Halfpipe finals, with a career-best fifth-place finish in just her fourth World Cup appearance.<\/p>\n
Gustav Legnavsky, 20, competed alongside Melville-Ives in the men\u2019s final, finishing ninth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cI had such a good training, so I said to my coach, \u2018I am going to go hammers…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":228665,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[2112,10542,131127,115957,136275,115958,103211,110658,111,139,69,213,6202,20065,377],"class_list":["post-228664","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-colorado","tag-cup","tag-finley","tag-freeski","tag-freeskier","tag-halfpipe","tag-ives","tag-melville","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-sports","tag-wins","tag-wnaka","tag-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228664","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=228664"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/228664\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/228665"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=228664"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=228664"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=228664"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}