Mathilde Gremaud opens the season for the second time in a row with a victory at the Big Air Chur, preventing a Swiss disappointment. The men disappoint.
Gremaud, overall World Cup and discipline winner in Big Air and Slopestyle in 2023/24, seamlessly picked up on her performances from the previous season after a seven-month break from competition. What's more, with 178.50 points from her best two jumps, the 24-year-old from Freiburg virtually outclassed the competition in the absence of Olympic champion Aileen Gu.
Three months before the Laax Open and five months before the home World Championships in the Engadine, the highlight of the season not only from a Swiss perspective, Gremaud triumphed with a 17.5 point lead. Although two of the three jumps in the final counted towards the score, her victory was almost a foregone conclusion after the second round. Surprisingly, 16-year-old Italian Flora Tabanelli and 18-year-old German Muriel Mohr took second and third place in their first Big Air at World Cup level. French co-favorite Tess Ledeux finished fifth after one botched and two modest jumps.
Dominance without risk
"Crazy. I've never noticed the volume of the crowd like I did here before the second jump. I could only enjoy the third jump," said Gremaud, delighted in front of the 9,000 spectators. The Olympic slopestyle champion jumped with a certain amount of caution: "I actually wanted to make my grabs a bit more difficult. But this hill is very difficult to ski. I tried it in training and crashed, so I stayed on the safe side today. That paid off."
It was the 14th World Cup victory and eighth in two years for Gremaud, who will not be competing in all the World Cups this winter in order to work on new tricks ahead of the 2026 Olympic Games in Livigno. However, only 15 women took part in the competition in Chur. Sarah Höfflin (11th), Elsa Sjöstedt (14th) and Anouk Andraska (15th) did not make it into the final of the top eight.
Swiss men beaten in qualifying
The first three home competitions of the season got off to a sobering start from a Swiss perspective. Led by Andri Ragettli, all 13 Swiss men who started failed to qualify - although Alexander Hall, Birk Ruud and Mac Forehand, a prominent trio, did not take part. The best result was achieved by 21-year-old Nils Ryhner from Glarus with a 20th place. Austrian Matej Svancer took victory for the second time since 2021.
Ragettli, for whom the competition came too early five weeks before the slopestyle opener on the Stubai Glacier, had to settle for 28th place. This means that the local hero from Flims, who has achieved 9 of his 31 top 3 rankings in Big Air, is still waiting for his first podium finish after the fourth edition of the Chur Big Air Festival.
