Check the women’s superpipe final podium runs from last night in Tignes, plus the top three men’s qualification runs.

WOMEN’S FINALS

1- KELLY CLARK

2 – ELENA HIGHT

3 – ARIELLE GOLD

MEN’S ELIMINATIONS

1 – Louie Vito

2 – Scotty Lago

With any luck the Slopestyle will go down today in Tignes at the Winter X Games Europe, so our man on the ground canvassed a bunch of pros and punter to see who they were tipping for the win. Check it.

As with yesterday’s pipe predictions, opinion is divided between a few of the heavy hitters – predominantly Torstein Horgmo and Mark McMorris – and once again we’ll step up to offer our own educated guess. For men, we’ll go for Torstein taking the win – as Vito says, his steeze on rails could play a big part – ahead of Marc McMorris and Max Parrot. As far as women go, it’s hard to look beyond Jamie Anderson to edge this, though we reckon Spencer O’Brien will run her close with Enni Rukajärvi rounding out the podium. Will we be right? Who do you think will have what it takes? Shout out below or Tweet using the hashtag #xgamesnow

“Winning the Nokia Rookie Award was huge,” says Arielle. “It helped me pay for travels, which was awesome, and was a kickstart to my career.” With a win at the FIS Snowboarding World Championships 2013, and a bronze at the Winter X- Games, Arielle has graduated from Rookie snowboarder to being a full-on contender for the Sochi 2014 Olympics in just one season.

And Ayumu? Gold at the Burton High Fives in New Zealand, Silver at the X-Games, Gold at the Burton European Open and at the 2013 US Open it took Shaun White on home soil (ok, machine-shaped snow) to stop Ayumu getting the top spot in the men’s pipe. He was always destined for greatness of course – the first time he dropped into the US Open pipe in 2011, the announcer said “It doesn’t make sense how something so small could go so big,” – but right now, no-one but Ayumu knows just how big he could go.

Rookie award halfpipe winner Chloe Kim. Yes, she won this much moolah.

Which brings us neatly to the question of who won the 2013 Nokia Rookie Award. Have the judges picked more legends-in- waiting? Are young men Darcy Sharpe and Taylor Gold, and girls Chloe Kim and Brooke Voigt the names that’ll be filling up the magazines, blogs and film sections of winter 2013-14? “I feel like the other years I wasn’t being recognised,” says winner Chloe Kim (pictured, right) “But this year I’m on fire.”

Ayumu and Arielle may have set the bar high, but this years batch of Nokia Rookie Award winners are well up for the challenge of beating it. But don’t take our word for it, you decide whether they’re the next big things.

How? By checking out this short film we made at the 2013 BUSO. And yes, the entire film is shot on Nokia Lumia 920 phones.

Photos of the Nokia Rookie Award Winners attached with relevant names in the credits.

Check out www.nokia.com for more details.

Prior to the finals everyone had been raving about how Vail’s pipe was one of the best ever built, and after witnessing the finals it’d be hard to disagree. The level of riding, specifically the amplitude these guys and girls were getting, was next level. Shaun and Kelly won – which is no great surprise – but they were both given a run for their money by two kids who represent the future of men’s and women’s pipe riding: 14-year-old Ayumu Hirano and 16-year-old Arielle Gold both were arguably the people’s champions and showed that they’ll be deeply involved in writing pipe riding’s next few chapters. Props must also go to Christian Haller for the best Method of the day that, sadly, we couldn’t find a clip of. We saw it, Hitch, we saw it…

***Warning: Most of these videos contain AWFUL music. Set machines to mute.***

MEN

1 – Shaun White

2 – Ayumu Hirano

3 – Louie Vito

WOMEN

1 – Kelly Clark

2 – Hannah Teter

3 – Arielle Gold

Ayumu Hirano. What were you doing when you were 14? Ayumu was winning the BEO with monster hits like this. All photos: Sami Tuoriniemi

It was a case of ‘the kids are alright’ today here in Laax as 16-year-old Arielle Gold and 14-year-old Ayumu Hirano bossed the super ditch to take the BEO halfpipe crowns…

After the disappointment of yesterday’s slopestyle finals having to be canned due to crappy conditions, today Mother Nature cracked a grin and – though conditions weren’t tip top – stopped blowing a gale and lifted her cloudy skirt to allow the pipe finals to go down as planned.

Arthur Longo.

The women were first to drop and, despite some snowfall and foggy conditions, put on a decent showing with a bit of a shock result to boot. Back-to-back 720s from the likes of Elena Hight and Serena Shaw were impressive, as was Elena Hight’s style, Ellery Hollingsworth‘s Michaelchuck flips and – naturally – Kelly Clark‘s monster amplitude. However, turning heads was 16-year-old American Arielle Gold, who took the early lead with a heady cocktail of style, huge hits and tech combos. She even turned it up a notch for her final run, improving on her earlier score to tighten her grip on first place, her proper poked backside airs to steezy front 5s up top standing out.

Arielle Gold gets the shower from Kelly Clark.

Kelly Clark was sat in second after 2 runs, the high scoring one being solid but with Gold in pole we were expecting her to use her experience to unleash in the last. The pressure, which she can’t have felt too often here (usually she tends to have a victory lap) was most certainly on bu unfortunately for Kelly, she slammed on the first hit leaving Gold to take the top spot. “This is a huge win for me,” said a clearly delighted Arielle. “I am pretty stoked. It’s my first 6Star title, that’s crazy!”

Matt Ladley.

After a quick reshape it was time for the men to take centre stage and as if on cue the clouds lifted and the sun beamed down setting the scene for a memorable showdown. Huge airtime, insane spins and a peppering of double corks were the order of the day from the get-go, with some dudes who’d battled through the early rounds making a good impression – namely Swiss teenagers David Hablützel and Lucien Koch. But the invited dudes were, predictably, making their experience count too. Scotty Lago had the crowd hooting for his unique approach to pipe riding, often triple-poking his spins or double nosegrabbing his frontside 900s that saw him settle into second place after the second run, but he was bumped down a spot when Iouri Podladtchikov finally managed to put the run he wanted down.

Scotty Lago.

But this final was all about 14-year-old Japanese sensation Ayumu Hirano who’d recently announced himself taking silver at the X Games. Though he technically should ride in the Junior category he was going bigger than any of the other riders, and with style for days. His second run consisted of an enormous backside air, frontside 1080 tail grab, Cab 1080 nose grab and a frontside double cork 1080 that earned him an unassailable 87.60 points and his first BEO pipe title. “The conditions were really difficult,” he said after the Champagne shower, “but I am very happy that I could show my best riding. I am super stoked”

Taylor Gold.

As they say, “Booom!” Junior Jam tomorrow. More then then.

Ayumu ist the boss.

The Burton US Open has long been THE contest to get noticed at.

In the 1990s, it was the contest that symbolised Terje’s absolute domination of competitive snowboarding. The US Open is also where a then-unknown 14 year-old called Kazuhiro ‘Kazu’ Kokubo burst onto the scene back in 2003. And in 2009, it was the contest that saw Chas Guldemond turn up unannounced, blow away the field and usher in a new era of slopestyle riding.

Nokia Rookie Award winner Ayumu Hirano

In short, the list of careers launched at the Burton US Open is long and illustrious. The event has always been completely open to anybody with the skills to step up and make a name for themselves alongside the best snowboarders in the world.

It all helps to explain why at the 2012 event, Nokia introduced the Nokia Rookie Award: a $5,000 prize and Nokia Lumia 800 awarded to the breakthrough male and female talent at this year’s half pipe competition.

Nokia Rookie Award winner Arielle Gold

So how do you determine a ‘breakthrough’ rider? The winners were chosen by an Awards Committee, and presented by current US Open judge Satu Järvelä, whose own wins at the 1995 and 1996 USO half pipe events helped push women’s snowboarding to the next level.

The Committee looked at each competitor’s TTR ranking and scores, rated how progressive their riding was, and examined how far they’d come through the competition.

In the end, two particularly worthy winners were chosen, and Nokia is extremely proud to announce that Ayumu Hirano from Japan and Arielle Gold from the US are the 2012 winners of the Nokia Rookie Award. Get used to those names. If history repeats itself, we’ll be hearing a lot more from them in the coming years.