Top tens for Crawford, Bright and Johnstone in Laax

Published Sun 21 Jan 2018

Courtesy: www.olympics.com.au 

Australia's Holly Crawford and Nate Johnstone have finished seventh and tenth in the final Halfpipe World Cup prior to PyeongChang 2018.

Competing in Laax, Switzerland, Crawford put down a best score of 46.50 on her second of two runs in the 8-woman final. 

Crawford's teammate and fellow three-time Olympian Torah Bright progressed through to the final earlier in the week but did not start leaving her in eighth place overall. 

China dominated the competition with Jiayu Lu claiming top spot with a score of 96.25, beating compatriot Xuetong Cai and Spaniard Queralt Castellet.

In the men's event Johnstone put down a best run of 46.00 to end the event in tenth as he builds towards competing at his second Olympic Games in PyeongChang. 

Sochi 2014 gold medallist Iouri Podladtchikov impressed on home soil taking out the victory with a score 90.50 ahead of Yuto Totsuka of Japan and China's Yiwei Zhang.

The event did not feature a number of highly ranked athletes from the USA who had their final selection event at Mammoth Moutain in Colorado. 

Matt Bartolo
olympics.com.au