Canada’s Brendan Mackay and China’s Eileen Gu were crowned winners in the halfpipe, as The Snow League wrapped up its stop in China with its first-ever set of freeski contests.

Because of The Snow League’s unique format featuring a head-to-head bracket and best-of-three matchups, Mackay took eight runs throughout the day, more than any other skier. Fatigue was clearly setting in by the end of the contest, but the 28-year-old’s incredible amplitude was on display all day long, along with a deep bag of tricks.

Mackay’s showdown with 17-year-old Luke Harrold in the final turned out to be a barnburner. After a miscue by Mackay gave Harrold the Run 1 victory, both skiers put down heavy runs on their second lap through the pipe. While Harrold wasn’t going as high as Mackay, his technical skills were on display with a run that consisted of back-to-back switch alley-oop tricks (one of which was a 1260), a bone air, a left double cork 1620 and a right double cork 1260. 

Mackay countered with a massive run that opened with a switch alley-oop double cork 900 and continued with a switch double cork 1080, alley-oop flat spin 540, left double cork 1620 and right double cork 1260. Four of his five hits went more than 15 feet out of the pipe.

The judges gave the Run 2 win to Mackay by the narrowest of margins — 89.00 vs. 88.50 — and after some banter and a tandem snowmobile ride back up to the top of the pipe, the two skiers dropped in for a decisive third and final run.

Harrold was first to drop and had a decent run going until his ski ejected on the landing of his fourth hit. Although it wasn’t considered a crash, it kept the young New Zealander from finishing his run, which would hurt his score. A strategic Mackay was then able to dial back the difficulty of his run — while still keeping his amplitude high — to win the tiebreaker and claim victory in The Snow League’s first-ever men’s freeski halfpipe event.

“It was really cool competing in this format,” Mackay said afterward. “There’s a lot of strategy and also a lot of luck with who you’re up against and if you’re able to conserve energy or if you have to put it all out there in [quarterfinals]. I feel super grateful to have put down my runs.”

A high level of riding was on display throughout the competition, especially once the semifinals began. Nick Goepper, now entering his third season of halfpipe since making the switch from slopestyle, looked strong throughout the contest but was eliminated in the semifinals after a hard crash in Run 3. Goepper landed a 1620 in that run but clipped the deck on his next wall and fell to the bottom of the halfpipe. The crash forced him to withdraw from the event, rather than taking part in the 3rd-place matchup.

That gave 3rd place to Gus Kenworthy, who was competing at his first event since the 2022 Beijing Olympics. Because his quarterfinal opponent, reigning world champion Fin Melville Ives, was a late scratch from the event, Kenworthy’s only two runs of the contest came in the semifinals. But he certainly impressed with those runs, the second of which included two 1440s. Both of Kenworthy’s runs scored in the 80s but weren’t quite enough to top Harrold in the judges’ eyes.

The 34-year-old Kenworthy announced in May that he was coming back from retirement to make a run at a fourth Olympics.

In the women’s event, the eight-athlete field lost a skier when Great Britain’s Zoe Atkin was forced to withdraw due to an illness she’d been battling throughout the week. With the reigning world champion out of the field, the matchup everyone had their eyes on was a quarterfinal showdown between the last two Olympic champions: Gu and Canada’s Cassie Sharpe.

Gu’s usual combination of amplitude, technicality, execution and consistency was on full display as she swept Sharpe in the quarterfinals, then faced off with two of her teammates: Li Fanghui in the semifinal and Zhang Kexin in the final.

Gu swept both of those matchups as well, but China ended up sweeping the podium in front of a home crowd.

“Watching the burgeoning freeski scene here [in China] has been nothing short of incredible,” Gu said afterward. “My goal ever since I was very young — 8 or 9 years old — was to inspire just one young girl to start freeskiing, and just looking out now, and seeing how many girls there are in the park just leaves me at a loss of words.”

As part of the competition format, athletes must drop in from opposite sides of the pipe for their first two runs in each round. In the first run of the final, Gu landed a left cork 900, right 720, switch left 720, right 900 with a Buick grab, and two alley-oops in opposite directions. Her second run featured the same collection of tricks in a different order.

The Snow League is a new contest series developed by Shaun White, and two more events remain in its inaugural season. Only the snowboarders will compete in the next edition, which takes place in February right after the Winter Olympics. The freeskiers will return for the season finale in March in Laax, Switzerland.

Men's Freeski Halfpipe

1. Brendan Mackay (CAN)
2. Luke Harrold (NZL)
3. Gus Kenworthy (USA)
4. Nick Goepper (USA)
5. Birk Irving (USA)
6. Hunter Hess (USA)
7. David Wise (USA)

Women’s Freeski Halfpipe

1. Eileen Gu (CHN)
2. Zhang Kexin (CHN)
3. Li Fanghui (CHN)
4. Svea Irving (CHN)
5. Cassie Sharpe (CAN)
6. Amy Fraser (CAN)
7. Rachael Karker (CAN)