Chloe Kim and Yuto Totsuka win the Halfpipe Final at the LAAX OPEN 2021

As soon as it got dark, the floodlights went on in the impressive superpipe at Crap Sogn Gion for the absolute highlight of the LAAX OPEN 2021, the women's and men's night finals. In the first halfpipe event of the FIS Snowboard Tour 2020/21, Olympic champion Chloe Kim (USA) and Yuto Totsuka (JPN) were crowned the beaming winners of the most prestigious snowboard contest on European soil and will each go home with CHF 15,750.

The women opened the final in the 200 meter superpipe. The gold medallist of the Youth Olympic Games 2020 Mitsuki Ono was in the lead after her first run with a lot of amplitude ahead of her 2 Japanese teammates. Both defending champion Queralt Castellet (SPA) and top favorite Chloe Kim (USA) failed to make their runs. So the second run promised pure thrills with the two top favourites in the back of the field. Spain's Castellet went full risk again, but crashed again at 1080 on the second hit. Last but not least, Semi-Final winner Chloe Kim was at the start of the pipe and, lying in 5th place, showed nerves of steel and delivered the best run of the evening, which the judges rewarded with 89.75 points (Backside Air Frontside 1080 Tail, Cab 720 Weddle, Front 900 Tail, McTwist Indy). This pushed her to the top of the field at the last minute by a significant margin. An incredible performance from Chloe, who celebrated her comeback here with her third LAAX OPEN title after almost two years out: "I'm so grateful that I managed my second run, even though I was totally nervous. I am very happy to be back! " Japan's Mitsuki Ono (76.50 points) and Sena Tomita (75.75 points) completed the podium. Young German Leilani Ettel finished the final with a strong 4th place.

Then came the men's final, dominated mostly by the duel of Scotty James and Yuto Totsuka, featuring arguably the highest level of riding in the history of halfpipe snowboarding. But back to the beginning. First up, Ruka Hirano (JAP) put on a phenomenal run that gave him the current lead with 88.25 points until defending champion Scotty James (AUS) took it from him with a technically challenging run (93.75 points). However, the top four of the Semi-Final were still competing at this point, including Scotty's biggest rival Yuto Totsuka (JAP). The 19-year-old Japanese skier showed a quality run that put him in 2nd place just behind Scotty (90.25 points). In the second run, none of the other riders came close to the scores of the two leaders. Nevertheless, it was clear that both Scotty and Yuto will take full risk to win the title.

Scotty couldn't top his score. Yuto, on the other hand, wowed the judges with a run the likes of which the world has never seen before. Maybe even the best halfpipe run ever: Frontside 1440 Frontside Grab on the first hit, followed by a combo that Yuto landed for the first time today - Switch Frontside 1260 Frontside Grab into Switch Backside 1080 Weddle - and a Backside 1260 Weddle and Frontside Double 1260 Frontside on the last two hits. Yuto was bursting with pride: "I'm totally happy that for the first time in my life I landed the Switch backside 1080 Weddle.
1080 combo". After three times 2nd place in a row Yuto Totsuka finally took his first LAAX OPEN victory. Ruka Hirano (JAP) completed the podium in third place. German Andre Höflich surprised with a very strong performance and just missed the podium in fourth place. The three Swiss were not able to use their home advantage, best was David Hablützel in sixth place.

The LAAX OPEN 2021 ended on an exciting and sporting high note, adding to LAAX's history of success with this third night final and 17th pipe final of an OPEN contest at Crap Sogn Gion.