Corning Wins Bronze in Snowboard Slopestyle at 2023 World Championships
The Bakuriani 2023 FIS Freestyle Ski, Snowboard, and Freeski World Championships launched into the second week of competition today, and Chris Corning came away with a bronze medal in the men’s slopestyle snowboard competition.
When asked what he was most proud of from the competition today Corning said: “I’m most proud of my course usage today. I did new stuff for me with putting a backside [1800] in my run, I’ve not done that in a slopestyle run before in a competition. I’m super stoked about that, I’ve wanted to do it for years and just have not had the opportunity.”
“The course was good today,” said Corning. “It got really slushy, we haven’t really had a good day of slush at all, and it was my first time riding slush this year, so I was happy to put a run down and ride well today.”
Corning adds to his already impressive collection of World Championships hardware, which also includes a first place slopestyle finish from 2019, in addition to a second place big air medal and third place slopestyle medal from 2017. Fellow American Brock Crouch finished eighth for the day, followed by teammates Jake Canter in 11th, and Sean FitzSimons in 36th.
After battling multiple days of weather delays due to strong winds, the athletes were stoked to get the competition off the ground. By the afternoon, the sun came out just in time for finals. The finish area was full of fans, including the U.S. Snowboardcross Team, who came out to cheer on their teammates after wrapping up board testing for their competitions later this week.
It was a tough day for the women, with Courtney Rummel barely missing the final and ending up as the top American in 14th place. She said of course conditions: “It was really fast today and there was no wind, the rails were a little sticky…so that was a little hard. But there was good speed throughout the course so that was nice.” Ty Schnorrbusch and Jade Thurgood finished 22nd and 27th, respectively, with Rebecca Flynn making the difficult call to pull out of the contest as a DNS.
Rounding out the men’s podium were Marcus Kleveland of Norway in first, and Ryoma Kimata of Japan in second. The women’s podium saw Mia Brookes (GBR) take the gold in her first ever World Championships appearance, followed by Zoi Sydowski Synnott (NZL) and Miyabi Onitsuka (JPN).
The action from Georgia continues with wen’s and women’s snowboard halfpipe qualifications going down on March 1, followed by finals on March 3. Catch finals LIVE on skiandsnowboard.live
Results
HOW TO WATCH
Friday, March 3
1:00 a.m. ET - men’s and women’s halfpipe finals - Peacock, skiandsnowboard.live
5:30 a.m. ET - men’s and women’s snowboardcross - Peacock, skiandsnowboard.live
Saturday, March 4
5:30 a.m. ET - team snowboardcross - Peacock, skiandsnowboard.live
Sunday, March 5
5:00 a.m. ET - men’s and women’s big air finals - Peacock, skiandsnowboard.live