FREESTYLE SKI, AERIALS. Some of the world's best aerialists showed their biggest tricks at a water ramp at the seventh annual Festival AcrobatX competition held at the Yves Laroche National Aerials Training Centre, Canada's premier summer aerial training center on 4th September.

Russia's Ilya Burov won the men's event, followed in the slightest of margins by home crowd favorite Travis Gerrits of Canada and China's Liu Zhongqing in third.

The event was hampered by unstable weather, with a lightening storm delaying the start by 45 minutes. Nevertheless, athletes took advantage of a new format to impress the crowd with increasingly exciting tricks. Under the new format -- which is being considered for the 2014 Olympic Games in Sochi -- each aerialist gets two chances to make it from qualifications into the 12-person final. The final itself has three rounds of sudden death competition, leaving four athletes in the decisive round. The complicating factor is that each athlete must perform a different jump in each of the final rounds. As a result, winning requires not only three exceptional acrobatic tricks, but also strategy and great teamwork with the coaching staff.

On the ladies' side, it was China's day. The powerhouse aerial nation swept the podium. Kong Fanyu was first, Yu Yang took second while Shuangyfei Dai was third.

FIS news
07/09/2011

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