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Alex Ferreira’s heater lives on in potentially historic fashion.
A weather-interrupted competition at Mammoth Mountain last week resulted in an unexpected fourth-consecutive win this season for the Aspen native following his triumphant return to the top of the Winter X Games podium the previous weekend.
Following qualifications in halfpipe skiing on Thursday, wind and blowing snow on Friday resulted in the cancellation of the finals and the adoption of the qualifiers results to hand out medals. Fortunately for Aspen’s own, he had a strong showing in the qualifier round.
“Obviously we would have liked (to) have held the contest,” Ferreira told FIS-Ski.com. “The athletes want it, Mammoth wants it, U.S. Ski wants it, FIS wants it … but we did have a beautiful qualification day on Tuesday, and everyone knew there could be bad weather later in the week and that we had to go all-in. I was fortunate enough to go all-in and do a great run, and I’m super grateful to keep this train rolling.”
Ferreira’s perfect season kept rolling, with his third win in three tries in World Cup competition and his career third X Games gold in January. The three golds on the World Cup circuit are already a career-high, and he’ll shoot for the perfect season with two events in Calgary, Alberta, from Feb. 15-17.
According to data on FIS-Ski.com, the only male skier to sweep a multiple-event FIS World Cup season was Finland’s Kalle Leinonen in 2006 — when there were only two events. None have won three golds in a season as far back as 2004, the first season on the website’s record.
It’s a different story in women’s halfpipe skiing. Eileen Gu swept the four-event 2022 season before winning gold in both the halfpipe and big air at the Olympics.
For Ferreira, the success at Mammoth is just another highlight in his comeback — it’s where he crashed just a month before the Olympics in 2022, sending him on an intense rehab journey to get ready for the games in Beijing, where he took a bronze medal. Last year, after crashing out at X Games, he missed the competition in its entirety. That made 2024 his first earnest crack at the competition at Mammoth since 2018, when he took home a silver medal.
Ferreira scored an 86.25 on his first run that would have ultimately landed him a silver just behind Hunter Hess’ 86.50; Hess wound up with the silver when it was all said and done. Ferreira put down an 87.00-pointer on his second attempt, which secured him the gold medal. He, bronze medalist Nick Goepper and Winter Park’s Birk Irving were the only athletes to score in the 80s on both of their runs.
Of local note from the men’s side, Tristan Feinberg finished 11th with a score of 79 on his second run and Jon Sallinen — representing Finland but a graduate of Carbondale’s Colorado Rocky Mountain School — finished 16th, back in the pipe after a pair of hard crashes at X Games.
On the women’s side, Gu’s run for another perfect season was snapped after she took a silver behind Canada’s Amy Fraser, who won her first World Cup gold medal. Great Britain’s Zoe Atkin took bronze to round out the podium.
The conclusion of the World Cup season is just a couple weeks away in Canada, where Ferreira looks to keep it going.
“I’ve been putting in lots of time in the gym and the skating rink and on rollerblades, doing everything that I possibly can. And to see all my hard work pay off is just the most beautiful thing I could ever ask for,” Ferreira said in the FIS article. “I feel more cool, calm and collected than I ever have. I feel more like myself. I’ve been (doing) this for, I don’t know, 12 years as a professional. I know what I’m doing and I know if I do my best I’ll be fine. I’ve got a better sense of myself and it’s translating to the pipe.”