Freestyler Denis Osipov captures bronze at the Ski Acrobatics World Cup round, held at the Raubichi Sports Complex to complete the 2014/15 season

Bronze earned in home round

Freestyler Denis Osipov captures bronze at the Ski Acrobatics World Cup round, held at the Raubichi Sports Complex to complete the 2014/15 season

Six of the best ski acrobats struggled to gain medals in the super-finals and the bronze was finally won by a narrow margin of 0.33 points. When Denis Osipov performed his triple somersault with three turns (with a jump difficulty of 4.175), he put himself into third place behind Ukraine’s Alexander Abramenko and the American Mac Bohannon (the World Cup overall leader). The latter two enjoyed a 4.525 jump difficulty.

Russia’s Ilya Burov and Pavel Krotov performed next and were able to push Denis from his third place — taking into consideration that their difficulty level was higher. The sportsmen jumped well but received lower marks from the judges. Incredibly, Krotov, who was placed fourth as a result, was just 0.33 points behind the Belarusian.

Denis Osipov has previously won bronze at a home round of the World Cup held in Raubichi in 2011.

Belarusian Maxim Gustik did not achieve his best results in the qualification round of the men’s event: the 2015 World Championship bronze holder was placed 15th, with 83.2 points.

The women’s event featured Anna Guskova who was placed 8th in the qualification round (from a field of 14). The Belarusian was through to the first finals, with 11 of the strongest freestylers. She was placed fourth at the end of the stage and, joining five of the other best ski acrobats, was through to the final round. In this decisive stage of the tournament however, she failed to land perfectly; with 57.13 points, she was placed sixth in the final standings.

This season, the line-up of the Belarusian freestyle team has undergone changes. After the Sochi Olympics, Alexey Grishin (a medal winner at the 2010 Vancouver Games) and Dmitry Dashchinsky (who won Olympic medals in 1998 and 2006) left the team; the latter has taken on a coaching job. The team is also without the 2014 Sochi Olympic champions: Anton Kushnir has decided to miss a year to recover after his injuries and Alla Tsuper has finished her career.

By Igor Leshin
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