Aspen’s Ferreira claims third Crystal Globe after podium finish at Calgary World Cup
FIS/Courtesy photo
For the second consecutive season, Alex Ferreira is your Crystal Globe winner. The Aspen native landed on yet another podium on Saturday in Calgary — the final World Cup contest of the winter — and secured the overall FIS crown in men’s halfpipe skiing.
It wasn’t the clean slate he had a year ago when he won every contest he entered, but it’s still been another standout season for the 30-year-old who is set to compete in his third — and possibly final — Winter Olympics next February.
“This season, I had a bullseye on my back, everyone’s coming after me,” Ferreira said to FIS media in Canada. “To be expected, it was going to be a little more difficult, and I’m glad it is. They keep pushing me and making me a better person.”
He was third at the Calgary World Cup on Saturday, continuing a streak of podium finishes that is in the double digits. He scored 91.75 on his best run of finals, falling just short of Indiana’s Nick Goepper, who took second with 92.25.
The somewhat surprising winner was New Zealand’s Finley Melville-Ives (92.75). It was the first World Cup podium finish for the 18-year-old who is having a breakout season. His countryman, Luke Harrold, just missed the podium in fourth (89.50) and Canada’s Brendan Mackay settled for fifth (87) on home snow.
“Both of them were my heroes growing up,” Melville-Ives said of Ferreira and Goepper. “I looked up at them on the TV, watched them at the Olympics. I skied with Nick when I was younger. I can’t believe it, it’s nuts.”
Americans Hunter Hess, David Wise, and Dylan Ladd finished sixth, seventh, and eighth, respectively, with Birk Irving in 10th.
The Roaring Fork Valley had numerous other athletes competing in Calgary, although none outside of Ferreira qualified through to finals. Local skier Nick Geiser officially finished 17th, with the top 16 from qualifying having made the finale.
As for the overall, season-long standings, Ferreira finished with 360 points, while Goepper was second with 320 points. Mackay was third (275), Melville-Ives was fourth (226), and Hess came in fifth (180). Only four of the five contests counted toward a skier’s point total, meaning Ferreira’s podium in Calgary didn’t actually add anything to his tally.
In the five World Cup competitions this winter, Ferreira won two (Copper, Aspen) and was second in two (Cardrona, Secret Garden), with Saturday’s third place in Calgary closing it out.
This is Ferreira’s third career Crystal Globe for men’s halfpipe skiing as he also won the season-long title in 2018.
“I just keep working harder and harder,” he said in Calgary. “I just keep putting my nose to the grindstone and getting it done. I love the training, and it’s fun — it gives me a lot of purpose.”
While Calgary was the final World Cup stop, it doesn’t mean the season is over for the halfpipe skiers. A select few will still get to compete in the FIS Freestyle World Ski Championships late next month in Switzerland. While those teams have not been formally announced, Ferreira is almost certainly going to make the roster.
In the women’s halfpipe skiing final on Saturday in Calgary, China’s Fanghui Li won, her 90.50 besting Great Britain’s Zoe Atkin (87.75) and Canada’s Rachael Karker (87). Another Canadian, recent X Games champion Cassie Sharpe, was fourth, and Winter Park’s Svea Irving was fifth.
In a FIS freeski World Cup first, both Li and Atkin finished tied for first in the battle for the women’s Crystal Globe. Each skier finished with identical results this season: one victory, two second-place finishes, and a fifth-place finish. With no more tiebreakers to determine the winner, they both will be champions and each will receive their own globe.
“I never even expected that I would be able to be on top of the leaderboard at the end of the season,” Atkin said to FIS media. “So I was just trying to take it day by day and improve a little bit every day. To be able to get second today and win the Globe with Fanghui is so exciting, I never expected this.”
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