By Ben Steiner – olympic.ca
Canadian men took two spots on the podium at the FIS Snowboard World Cup slopestyle event on Saturday in Laax, Switzerland, as Liam Brearley and Cameron Spalding claimed gold and bronze, respectively.
Brearley, a native of Gravenhurst, Ontario, scored 89.93 points on his run to capture his first career World Cup win as the 20-year-old built on his previous podium haul of two second-place finishes and a third-place finish.
His first World Cup victory also comes nearly four years, exactly since he won three medals at the Lausanne 2020 Youth Olympic Games, where he hit the podium in each halfpipe, slopestyle and big air.
Meanwhile, Spalding, hailing from Havelock, Ontario, rounded out the podium with 83.90 points, finishing just behind Japanese rider Ryoma Kimata, who claimed second with a score of 85.31.
18-year-old Canadian Frank Jobin narrowly missed the podium, finishing with 78.36 points, good for fourth place behind his two podium teammates.
The trio in the top five weren’t the only Canadians to reach Saturday’s final; however, Nicolas Laframboise posted a score of 69.3, finishing 16th among the athletes who qualified for the final.
On the women’s side, Laurie Blouin finished sixth in slopestyle with a final score of 59.05 points, 20.48 points short of the final podium spot held by Austria’s Anna Gasser. American Julia Marino captured the top spot in the competition, while Germany’s Annika Morgan finished second.
Athletes took to the halfpipe under the lights later in the day, with Calgary’s Liam Gill leading Team Canada on the men’s side with an eighth-place finish, while no Canadian women qualified for their event’s final.
