<div><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">An incredible week of action at the Calgary Snow Rodeo FIS Snowboard World Cup wrapped up on Sunday with slopestyle finals, where the USA’s Julia Marino earned her second-straight World Cup victory in the women’s competition, and Canada’s own Darcy Sharpe put down one of the best runs we’ve ever seen on his way to a first career slopestyle World Cup victory.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">With the sun breaking through the clouds and welcome, unseasonably warm temperatures greeting the finalists for women’s finals on Sunday morning, and a unique, Charles Beckinsale-designed course in prime shape, nearly all the pieces were in place for a day to remember at Calgary’s Winsport Canada Olympic Park. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">The most important ingredient for that to happen, of course, would be that the seven women and 10 men dropping in on finals delivered some top-tier runs - and they provided that in spades. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>MARINO GRABS YELLOW BIB WITH SECOND-STRAIGHT WIN</strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">It was clear from the outset of the Snow Rodeo that Marino would be tough to beat, with the 25-year-old coming into Sunday as the top qualifier from Saturday and fresh off a victory on home soil at Mammoth Mountain last weekend. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Marino kept that momentum rolling straight into her first run of the day. Opening with frontside boardslide 270, Marino continued to pick her way through the multifaceted rail sections with a 50-50 to fronstside lipslide to fakie, then a switch backside bluntslide 270 out before heading into the course’s two jumps where she stomped a cab double cork 900 weddle and a backside 720 melon, before finishing things off with a backside bluntslide 270 melon off on the cannon rail for a score of 78.36 and her seventh career World Cup win.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">As well, with Sunday’s victory Marino takes over top spot on the FIS Snowboard slopestyle World Cup standings from Reira Iwabuchi (JPN), with Marino now holding a virtually unassailable 83 point lead her Japanese counterpart with only one slopestyle competition left in the 2022/23 season.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">“I’m feeling pretty good about my riding right now,” Marino said from the finish are after her victory lap, “This is a super fun course. I had a blast this week riding this. We got a ton of time on course to feel it out and get comfortable on it and put some stuff down. I wanted to go backside 1080 on my final lap but I got a little too hyped up, maybe went a little too big on my cab 900, maybe landed a little weird, so…I would have loved to have got a back 10 in there but oh well, there will be other opportunities for that.”</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Joining Marino on the podium were a pair of Canadians, with Laurie Blouin landing in second place with a score of 76.41 and Jasmine Baird making a strong return to competition after a brief injury break to earn a third place finish, just back of Blouin with a score of 76.21. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Blouin’s Sunday podium was her third in three Snow Rodeo competitions since the slopestyle World Cup returned to Calgary in 2019/20 after an almost 10 year absence from the calendar, while Baird’s podium was her third of the 2022/23 season, to go along with her third place finish at the Big Air Chur and her win at the Edmonton Style Experience big air.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Not only did Marino take over the slopestyle yellow World Cup leaders’ bib on Sunday, with 253 points she also moved up into third place on the Park & Pipe overall standings behind Japanese riders Mitsuki Ono (360 points) and Iwabuchi (322 points). </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><strong>SHARPE’S EPIC SECOND RUN EARNS FIRST SLOPESTYLE WORLD CUP WIN</strong></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">While it was a big morning for the Canadian squad in the women’s competition, things got even better in the men’s competition when 27-year-old Darcy Sharpe put down one of the finest runs of his already impressive career to claim his first career World Cup slopestyle win. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Leading things off in his second run with a gap switch backside 270 lipslide on the down-flat-down rail, Sharpe then went gap switch hardway 270 on to 270 off on the flat down, and then into a frontside lipslide 270 out, which he gapped from the rainbow rail takeoff over to the long downrail. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Into the jumps Sharpe put the hammer down, first with a frontside triple cork 1440 weddle, and then a backside triple cork 1440 weddle, before finishing things off with a 50-50 to nollie backside rodeo 720 weddle out on the cannon rail. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Sharpe’s score of 88.85 was one of the highest ever earned in a section-by-section judging format, where it’s notoriously hard to achieve scores approaching the 90’s due to each element of the riders’ runs being judged separately and eligible for deductions. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">In the finish area, with friends, family and a stoked Canadian crowd looking on, Sharpe was justifiably hyped on his week at the Snow Rodeo.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">“I was trying to have a heavy rail section,” Sharpe said on his approach to the competition, “Especially in a rail dominated course, you’ve gotta make the most of it, and I love rails so I was trying to max those out. But man, that one run I was just in the flow, locking into everything and it felt so good.</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">“It’s my first World Cup win since 2015, but that was actually a big air, so this is my first slopestyle World Cup win and it means a lot to me just to have that on the mantle. It’s epic. And to have my family here, friends flew out, homies everywhere…I couldn’t be more stoked.”</div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Second behind Sharpe was the USA’s Dusty Henricksen, who earned a score of 82.66 for a second run that attacked the Snow Rodeo course with the unique, flowing style that the 20-year-old Californian has become one of the most beloved snowboarders in the world for displaying. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">Rounding out the men’s top-3 and capping off an epic, four-podium day for the host Canadian squad was 17-year-old Cameron Spalding, whose second-run score of 77.33 was just enough to give him third place and his first of what should be many World Cup podiums. </div><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: justify;">With their Snow Rodeo podium cowboy hats drenched in champagne and smiles on their faces, the Calgary top-3s rode into the sunset for a few days of downtime before we head back to Europe for the biggest event of the 2022/23 season - the Bakuriani 2023 FIS Freestyle, Snowboard and Freeski World Championships, going down from 19 February to 5 March.</div>