Category
🥇
SportsTranscript
00:00Aaron Sauvé riding out of Roslyn, BC, home mountain at Red Mountain, a gorgeous little spot in the Kootenays, back home in Canada.
00:09Aaron Sauvé needing to just find the flow, find the vibe that she had last year.
00:16She said she's been having a hard time accessing the same mindset that she took in last year.
00:20A little bit of pressure as the world champion sitting on her shoulders.
00:24But now, Aaron Sauvé on course and looking to make a big splash on the Wilty Loader.
00:29Yeah, it's a little bit sometimes easier to come in when no one knows you.
00:33No expectations. You can wow everyone.
00:36And a little bit harder when that target is right on your back.
00:39Everyone's competing against your last year's standing.
00:42You saw first, first, second.
00:44She knows how to podium. Let's see if she can do it here today on the Wilty Loader.
00:48Yeah, and competing against herself a little bit too.
00:50Just trying to find the right headspace where she can be free of the pressure,
00:55free of the expectations of a world champion, and just snowboard.
00:58Because she's good at that.
01:00Aaron Sauvé now entering a slightly different entrance towards the side hit that we saw.
01:06Mikayla Davis-Meehan makes such nice work of getting on the heelside edge,
01:10going a little bit more out to the rider's right.
01:13There is a feature there as well.
01:15Sorry, Aaron popping off that little bit of a control issue there.
01:19She butt checks.
01:21You can see that heelside edge.
01:23When they dig it in, the board just bounces around underneath them.
01:26And these riders, they have so much exposure below them.
01:29They've really got to be on these edge-to-edge control.
01:33The only way out is in air.
01:35Aaron making her way down, following her close friend Mikayla on the tour with the same line.
01:42Yeah, getting out here.
01:44This is where you've got to aim into that little notch of snow as Aaron finds her way,
01:50popping over that little kind of bushy rock section.
01:52And now the big air beneath her looming.
01:55She's got to get the trajectory right as she bounces all the way to the edge,
01:58a little bit sat down.
02:00And Aaron using that heelside edge to direct her,
02:02and she's clean through the avalanche debris.
02:10Nice way to hold on to that, making her way in.
02:15Again, they get a little bit few turns to breathe, to recalibrate, and to continue down.
02:21We still have a lot of riding below her.
02:23Yeah, and that debris section just makes you hold your breath as the riders are flying across it
02:28and you hope they don't clip something underneath.
02:30We did hear from the forerunners that the debris, while it's firm, it's not ice,
02:35so the nose of your board will bust through it if you hit it.
02:38And Aaron was clean through there.
02:39Now she just needs to get through this lower section.
02:42You can see the snow conditions really change on this part of the venue.
02:46There's a bunch of old tracks.
02:47It hasn't snowed here in a while, so those tracks did not get covered up.
02:50As Aaron using the heelside edge to direct herself and also control her speed,
02:55holding on to the speed and now getting into the section where she should be able to, yeah,
02:59let go a little bit more and just embrace the pace
03:03as Aaron Sauvé, the 2024 Freeride World Tour champion, heading down towards that arch.
03:09It still seems like such a long way, and you can see just the scale of this face.
03:14A tiny dot is Aaron Sauvé at the bottom
03:16as the mass of the Viltzi loader just looming up above is Aaron Sauvé now across the finish line.
03:23Yeah, I feel like this venue, there's a reason why it still exists.
03:28It's one that really separates the riders that can make it nearly 600 meters all the way down.
03:33That's a lot of riding and a lot of terrain to move through.
03:36Yeah, it is.
03:37And for Aaron Sauvé, if she is in the top three here in the FIBA Brune Pro,
03:42there's a chance that she makes the cut.
03:44It's not guaranteed here.
03:45As we look back at the replay, Aaron's approach to this,
03:48all the snowboarders definitely a bit of a rocky approach into this air.
03:52Yeah, you see that with the video judge scoring a little bit,
03:56digs on the control, but using that heelside edge, and she certainly stomped it on the way out.
04:02Yeah, and there was a control issue higher in the run as well as Aaron losing the heelside edge up there.
04:07So video judge on point.
04:09And it's one of the tough parts about being a judge.
04:12You have to be ruthless with the criteria.
04:14The riders are matching up to those five categories,
04:17and each one of them is their own separate piece.
04:20And so control definitely a little bit dinged.
04:22The rest of the run solid for Aaron Sauvé as we see her path down the mountain on the Mammut Line Tracker.
04:29She's trying to catch her breath, seeing her good buddy there,
04:31Michaela Davis-Meehan, sitting in the hot seat.
04:33Score jumping up to a 66 even, so she moves into second.