Canada’s Cassie Sharpe won gold in women’s halfpipe skiing at the Dew Tour on Friday after amassing a big score on her second run that her competitors couldn’t touch.
The skier from Comox, B.C., laid down a clean run of 93.66 points in the second round, giving her a victory in the event and valuable Olympic qualification points.
Sharpe’s closest competitor, France’s Marie Martinod, crashed on her third attempt while pushing herself trying to try to better the Canadian’s score.
With victory assured, Sharpe gave her final run a go anyway, crashing early as she tried to go big with her first jump.
“I didn’t give it enough juice,” she said.
But by that point it didn’t matter.
“When I was at the top and Marie crashed and didn’t beat my score, I was so relieved that I didn’t have to put everything on the line,” Sharpe said. “But I wanted to go out there and push myself and bump my own run up, so I did try.”
Martinod finished second with her second-run score of 92.00, while American Maddie Bowman was third with 90.33.
Sharpe led after the first run with 88.00 points, but she felt that while she was executing she was a bit too loose.
“I landed, but I was just messy on my right-3 to switch-3,” she said. “I kind of killed my speed so I didn’t go very big.
“I knew if I still got an 88 with that, if I go with the same tricks, even bigger with better grabs, then i could bump up my own score.”
Sharpe, the 2016 Winter X Games champion, now has time off before resuming training in Calgary in January.
