Sports

Deer Valley pulls off successful World Cup, despite weather conditions

KPCW | By Leslie Thatcher

Published February 9, 2025 at 1:32 PM MST

Fans watch as skiers make their way down Deer Valley's "Champion" course on Sat. Feb 9, 2025 — Fans watch as skiers make their way down Deer Valley's "Champion" moguls course on Thursday night, Feb. 6, 2025

Mother Nature provided a little bit of everything for this year’s Intermountain Health Freestyle International World Cup competitors at Deer Valley Resort.

Warm, spring-like conditions melted the snow between the moguls course Thursday. Then a cold front moved in creating white out conditions for the dual moguls competition Saturday. The ever changing weather kept race organizers on their toes for the 27^th annual Freestyle World Cup competition at Deer Valley Resort.

On Thursday, America’s Jaelin Kauf took the win in moguls after a grueling contest. This was her first single moguls win of the season. The 28^-year-old was the only woman that night to score more than 80 points [80.75]. In second place was France’s Perrine Laffont [79.63] and Maia Schwinghammer of Canada took third [75.22]. American Tess Johnson finished just off the podium in fourth.

Even with the win, Laffont maintains her lead in the World Cup standings.

For the men, Japan’s Ikuma Horishima pulled off a stunning and very difficult Double Full + 1440 capturing his first World Cup victory of the season.

Pavel Kolamakov of Kazakhstan took second and Benjamin Cavet of France finished third.

The result pushed Horishima to second place overall in the standings.

Unpredictable conditions on Friday forced officials to cancel the qualifications rounds for aerials. All athletes went straight to the finals that night. The Australians took an historic sweep of women’s aerials. After winning, Laura Peel retains her first place overall. She was followed by teammate Danielle Scott in second and Abbey Wilcox in third.

In the men’s competition, American Quinn Dehlinger, coming off an injury that left him sidelined last season, clinched the victory [122.57]. He was followed by Dmytro Kotovskyi of Ukraine in second [115.29] and American Christopher Lillis in third [104.43].

For the final competition on Saturday, in dual moguls, both Kauf and Horishima clinched back-to-back victories. This was Kauf’s 100^th World Cup start. Once again, she was able to edge out rival Laffont and took her third dual moguls victory of the World Cup season so far. Americans Olivia Giaccio finished third and Tess Johnson in fourth.

Parkites Alli Macuga finished eighth in moguls on Thursday and 28^th in duals on Saturday. Nick Page finished sixth in moguls and eighth in dual moguls.