Chinese snowboarding's collective progress makes a strong statement to the world

With three riders making it to a World Cup final together for the first time, Chinese snowboarding has backed up its collective rise with a history-making confidence boost at Beijing's iconic Olympic slope.

The night session of the International Ski and Snowboard Federation's Big Air World Cup event in Beijing ended up a milestone for the host on Friday after three Chinese men, Ge Chunyu, Su Yiming, and Zhao Yingxu, rode on a collective momentum to qualify together for Saturday's final round at west Beijing's Shougang Industrial Park.

It marked the first time that three Chinese men's snowboarders would appear in a World Cup event's final session, across all disciplines, in the 31-year history of the top-flight FIS series.

The trio's final run in Beijing was followed by an inspiring double delight delivered by Su and Ge finishing one-two on the podium at the Cup series' season opener in Chongli, Hebei province, last week.

Big air involves skiers or snowboarders tackling a vertical drop and performing a variety of flips, spins and grabs before they land. Each of the 63 snowboarders signing up for the qualifying round gets three attempts, with the combined score of their two best runs being counted. The top 10 from the qualifying session advance into the final round.

Japan's Yuto Miyamura led the qualifying field with a combined 173.25 points from his first two qualifier runs, followed by 19-year-old Ge, who scored 88.75 points from a massive frontside triple 1440 trick in his third run to come all the way down to finish second among all qualifiers.

China's reigning Olympic champion Su maintained his consistent performance, following his season-opening Cup win in Chongli, to score 166.5 points from his first two runs to settle with fourth, while unheralded teen prodigy Zhao Yingxu scored just enough to make the final cut with 143.75 points from his first two runs, which helped him rank 10th in the qualifying round.

Zhao, a 16-year-old talent, will be the youngest in Saturday's 10-athlete final, and he just feels stoked about making his career-first Cup final appearance on home snow.

"I didn't land my third run, falling a little bit short of my own expectations, but overall it was a good night for me," said Zhao, who is competing in just his second World Cup event in Beijing, following his debut last week in Chongli.

"It was a great learning curve for me, which helped me gain more experience and be more mentally mature at this level.

"More importantly, all the Chinese snowboarders riding together makes me feel so good, like a family."

Su, who won the big air gold medal at Beijing 2022 at exactly the same slope in Shougang, said the collective progress of Chinese snowboarding is making a strong statement to the world.

"My shared podium finish last week with Chunyu already proved that Chinese snowboarding is improving fast. Now we are riding together with more teammates on the World Cup stage, which has further enhanced our confidence," said Su, who also won a silver medal in slopestyle at the Beijing Winter Olympics.

sunxiaochen@chinadaily.com.cn