In his third appearance at the event, Finnish rider Juuso Laivisto claimed his second first-place finish at China’s 5Star TTR Red Bull Nanshan Open. “It’s been awesome to see how the event has grown the last years, since I won it the first time, when it was still a 4Star. I was stoked with my win, it was definitely heavy competition today. The others were just a little unfortunate I think.” Juuso said. 2nd in this last 5Star Slopestyle competition before the World Snowboarding Championships in February, was Sam Hulbert (USA), before Roope Tonteri (FIN) rounding up the podium.

With judges including Michi Albin, Ingemar Bachman and Scotty Wittlake in charge of narrowing yesterday’s 12 top-ranked riders down to four for the afternoon’s Super Finals, the level of riding was significantly elevated from the qualification round as riders gave their all for promises of fame, glory and of course the TTR points and prize money. After two runs each, USA’s Sam Hulbert would enter the Super Finals ranked first, followed by Juuso Laivisto, Roope Tonteri (FIN) and Teddy Koo (KOR).

Juuso Laivisto claimed first place on his second run, going huge with back-to-back bs900 mute, followed by a 50-50 to method on the polejam, bs lipslide on the downrail finishing off in style with a tweaked out fs360 nosebonk on the Red Bull cube. Roope Tonteri (FIN) unfortunately was unable to stomp what could have been a first place run, landing a cab900 indy but reverting out on his impressive bs1260 mute attempt – still finishing his run off in style with a switch boardslide 270out on the polejam and a lipslide 270out on the downrail, enough for third place. Sam Hulbert took second with a bs720 to fs1080 on the kickers and was the only rider to hit the jib section’s oversized-pipe with a 50-50 to bs360 out.