{"id":353734,"date":"2026-03-29T13:39:11","date_gmt":"2026-03-29T13:39:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/353734\/"},"modified":"2026-03-29T13:39:11","modified_gmt":"2026-03-29T13:39:11","slug":"skiing-ben-richards-crowned-world-freeride-ski-champion-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/353734\/","title":{"rendered":"Skiing: Ben Richards crowned world freeride ski champion"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/4N6IO4D_WGIM01SEP_10538_JPG.jpeg\" width=\"1050\" height=\"700\" alt=\"Ben Richards.\"\/><\/p>\n<p class=\"photo-captioned__information\">\nBen Richards<br \/>\nPhoto: photosport\n<\/p>\n<p>W\u0101naka skier Ben Richards has clinched the overall men&#8217;s crown on the Freeride World Tour after securing victory in the finals in Switzerland.<\/p>\n<p>The 26-year-old leap-frogged tour leader Toby Rafford of the United States with a 96-point run on the Bec des Rosses face in Verbier, executing a perfect 360 and linking multiple sections of difficult terrain seamlessly.<\/p>\n<p>Rafford settled for second place while Germany&#8217;s Tiemo Rolshoven was third.<\/p>\n<p>Richards said his final run was not perfect, with some improvisation needed.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I got pushed off my line so I made up a little bit in the middle, but the conditions were so perfect, I had such a good time,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>Despite two of this year&#8217;s tour stops being cancelled due to weather, the finale at Verbier Switzerland played out in perfect conditions with 50cm of fresh snow.<\/p>\n<p>Richards now holds both the world tour and world championship titles.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ben Richards Photo: photosport W\u0101naka skier Ben Richards has clinched the overall men&#8217;s crown on the Freeride World&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":353343,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[48,47,111,43,139,69,49,46,44,45,213],"class_list":["post-353734","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-audio","tag-current-affairs","tag-new-zealand","tag-news","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-podcasts","tag-public-radio","tag-radio-new-zealand","tag-rnz","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353734","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=353734"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/353734\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/353343"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=353734"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=353734"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=353734"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}