Crystal Globe winners to be decided in Norway
Published Tue 10 Mar 2020
From www.paralympic.org
The Crystal Globe winners of the World Para Snowboard World Cup will be revealed in Hafjell, Norway this week as the 2019-20 season comes to a close with three final races.
The Norwegian resort will host two snowboard-cross and one double banked slalom race from 10-15 March to wrap up the World Cup season, which started in November. Two of the races, the dual banked slalom and one of the snowboard-cross, will be worth twice the points.
Champion’s tribute
Australia’s Ben Tudhope could leave Norway with his career’s first overall Crystal Globe. He was second overall last season and currently leads the men’s SB-LL2 class by 1,240 points.
This season has been a rollercoaster for the 20-year-old Australian. He cruised into the World Cup on the momentum of winning the Crystal Globe in banked slalom last year. But when his coach, Mikko Wendelin, passed away suddenly a few days before the World Cup in Pyha, Finland, the season became about much more than just points.
“All we can do now is stick as a team and ride in his name and honour his legacy,” Tudhope said of how his training group, called Team Unicorn, is paying tribute to their late coach.
Tudhope dedicated his double gold in the snowboard-cross races in Pyha to Wendelin and continues to call up his advice at every race opportunity.
“Everything I do out here is for him and he’s in my head every step of the way telling me what to do and how to ride. I just want to make him proud,” Tudhope said.
“He was a very stubborn person so no one was perfect,” he added. “Some competitions I ran last year, he was like, ‘you could have done better’ and I’m like, ‘I got the gold medal mate, what more can I do?’ But he always pushed me and that has always come through me. If I think it’s a perfect run, there’s always a bit more I can do.”
Tudhope’s closest rival for the overall Crystal Globe is Owen Pick who soared in the rankings after picking up two gold medals in double banked slalom in La Molina, Spain in the first week of March. The British rider is also in the lead for the discipline’s Crystal Globe.