Watch the top three men’s and women’s slopestyle runs from the 2018 Junior Freestyle Ski & Snowboard World Championships. The comp is underway at Cardrona, New Zealand, where Kokomo Murase, 13, became the youngest slopestyle winner. From the FIS recap: “Murase’s first run was the kind of slopestyle competition run that would likely compete for a podium position at any contest in the world. The fact that her score of 90.20 was earned by an athlete still two-and-a-half months from her 14th birthday is truly incredible stuff.”
Murase is also the youngest woman to stand on an X Games podium. In May, she took gold in the X Games big air competition in Norway.
Japan, where snowboarders far outnumber skiers, is also dominating this competition on the men’s side— Takeru Otsuka took home gold in slopestyle. We expect Nippon will deliver to the world’s stage more riders armed with style and strength like Murase and Otsuka in the coming years.