Hickman flies to third at Junior World Championships

Ally Hickman has claimed Australia’s first medal of the Park & Pipe Junior World Championships in New Zealand, finishing third in today’s Snowboard Slopestyle final.

The 13-year-old took to the Cardrona course as the youngest competitor in the field on Monday and laid down a strong first run to lodge a score high enough to finish third in her heat.It was quite the opposite outcome in today’s final with a low-scoring first run only enough for the teenager to sit in tenth place. With nothing to lose, Hickman produced an outstanding second run (watch above), the judges rewarding her with a score of 66.50 which was enough to earn third place behind New Zealand’s Lucia Georgalli (91.00) and Italy’s Fanny Piantanida Chiesa (77.25).

Coming into the Junior World Championships, Hickman’s expectations were purely about executing her game plan which she did to great effect today.

“I wanted to land a run and try to get in the finals, and that happened, and I can’t believe that I came third!” she said. “It feels amazing - I can’t gather that I’ve just done that. I still can’t believe it but it’s really cool.”

Being forced to recompose herself after the first run, Hickman said a conversation with coach Ryan Tiene allowed her to visualise the job at hand.

“Ryan was being very supportive and saying ‘get the first run out of your head and focus on the second run’,” said Hickman. “I feel like I felt a lot of pressure going into it but when I dropped in, I was like ‘you’ve got this’ and I did it.

“I was a bit unsure - I landed my run, I did pretty much the best that I could do and I was just waiting for the score to come in.”

Hickman becomes just the second Australian to reach the Junior World Championships podium in Snowboard Slopestyle, the other occasion coming six years ago when Tess Coady claimed gold in Czechia.

On that occasion, Olympic bronze medallist Coady also took gold in big air, with Hickman saying she’s “feeling really excited and confident” going into that event which starts on Saturday.

Australia’s other athlete in action today in Cardona was World Rookie Tour winner Daisy Thomas in the Freeski Slopestyle final.

Thomas put herself in contention for the podium with an impressive score of 60.75 on her first run to sit in fourth. The 16-year-old put in another solid performance on her second run but was unable to improve her score, eventually finishing in seventh.

The Park & Pipe Junior World Championships continue later this week in Cardrona with Big Air qualification for Freeski (Friday) and Snowboard (Saturday) taking place ahead of the finals of both disciplines on Sunday.