Freestyle

China Sweeps Deer Valley Aerials

by
USSA
2014-01-10 21:57
 

PARK CITY, UT (Jan. 10) – World Champion Cheng Shuang led a Chinese sweep of the women’s aerials competition Friday in front of a rowdy crowd at the Visa Freestyle International FIS World Cup at Deer Valley. Olympian Anton Kushnir from Belarus took the win for the men, while local favorite Jonathan Lillis (Rochester, NY) landed a career best finish in fourth. The moguls athletes head back up to Champion, the 2002 Olympic venue, on Saturday to compete in a second moguls competition to close the Visa Freestyle International at Deer Valley.

HIGHLIGHTS

  • World Champion Cheng Shuang led a Chinese sweep of the women’s aerials competition Friday in front of a rowdy crowd at the Visa Freestyle International FIS World Cup at Deer Valley. The Chinese team took all four spots in the superfinal with Zhang Xin and Xu Mengtao finishing second and third.
  • Emily Cook (Belmont, MA) was the only U.S. woman to advance to finals and finished seventh.
  • Olympian Anton Kushnir from Belarus took the win for the men; while local favorite Jonathan Lillis (Rochester, NY) landed a career best finish in fourth and posted the best result for the USA.
  • Qi Guangpu of China and Alexei Grishin of Belarus rounded out the men’s podium.
  • Three U.S. men finished in the top ten, including Dylan Ferguson (Amesbury, MA) in seventh and Mike Rossi (Long Valley, NJ) in ninth.
  • The moguls athletes head back up to Champion, the 2002 Olympic venue, on Saturday to compete in a second moguls competition to close the Visa Freestyle International at Deer Valley.

QUOTES
Jonathan Lillis
My mentality was that I had nothing to lose. It's the Olympic year and it's the hometown crowd. All you have to do is show what you have. I find that when I go bigger and push harder, the results are better than if I try to stay safe, because you are just more motivated to do better.

I’ve been doing aerials for seven years. This is my best result, with career highest scores all through the day. It wasn't a perfect jump in the final four, but to make it there is awesome. Today was a breakthrough. It's been a breakthrough year. I'm learning to deal with the pressure now. It's a big confidence booster. It makes me feel like I'm that much closer to winning the next time I'm out there. 

Dylan Ferguson
It’s cool to see some guys throw some big tricks. With so many rounds, you have to play it by ear what trick you’re going to do in each round. You might see what everybody else is doing and then sort of play it from there. You obviously want to qualify highest so you can see who is going to throw those big tricks in front of you.

Lillis is jumping great. He’s got some big tricks out there that he’s just started doing, so hopefully he puts it down in the superfinal.

Todd Ossian, Head Aerials Coach
This is Jon's career best and we're proud of him. Jon is very capable and just coming on at the right time right now. He loves the big crowd and Deer Valley is an amazing place. The crowd was behind him tonight. There's nothing more than a big crowd for Jon to feed off of. The bigger the better. All of our guys have the biggest tricks and there's a lot of strategy that goes into this format and saving that for the end.

RESULTS
Official Men’s Results
Official Women’s Results

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