The Crested Butte News Serving the Gunnison Valley since 1999
Next stop Tignes
Aaron Blunck got yet another glimpse of his potential future when he competed in the 2013 Voss/Oslo FIS Freestyle World Ski Championships.
The World Championships brought in the top four athletes per country from around the world—an Olympic preview for sure.
Blunck came into the event hot off a win at the Aspen Open and felt back on his game for the big competition.
“Aspen gave me a big positive boost and I was like, let’s bring it on,” says Blunck.
Full of confidence and “stoked” to be in Norway where, as Blunck put it, “skiing is part of their religion,” Blunck had a tenuous start on his first run of the qualifiers, falling on one of his easiest moves.
“I’ll admit, I was kind of freaking out,” says Blunck.
Blunck settled down, refocused his attention on the goal at hand, and landed a clean run in his final qualifier to move on to the finals.
“I decided not to worry about being the top qualifier, just make sure to qualify,” explains Blunck. “Any spot that’s possible gets me stoked.”
He entered the finals seventh out of 12 skiers and while he had one run in mind for the finals, he throttled back a bit on his first of two runs to get his feet back under him.
“I just wanted to land a good run,” says Blunck.
Blunck tweaked his sequence of tricks accordingly and proceeded to score an 86.5 on his first run. Happy with his effort and place overall, Blunck decided to go for it on his final run of the competition.
Things started out well for him going bigger than he had before out of the pipe, but as his run continued, he felt a nagging sense that he was running out of pipe.
“I went bigger than I did on my first run and was wondering if I should do my last move,” explains Blunck.
He decided to go for it, and as he came around on his “unnatural dub flat seven” he realized he had run out of pipe and landed at the tail end of the halfpipe.
“There was no tranny [transition] and I ended up slapping back on my head,” says Blunck.
His first run score stood though, as Blunck finished in sixth place overall.
“It was a huge accomplishment for sure,” says Blunck.
Blunck now heads to France to compete in the European Winter X Games in Tignes, France, March 20-22. The skier SuperPipe qualifier will be on Thursday, March 21 with the SuperPipe finals on Friday, March 22.
