Ski and Snowboard Club Vail mogul skiers claim World Junior Championship gold medals

Coming into her final FIS World Junior Championship, Reese Chapdelaine was hoping to carry the torch set aflame by Kylie Kariotis, who won dual gold for the U.S. last spring in Chiesa in Valmalenco, Italy.

“I want to win the competition for the Americans again,” Chapdelaine told the Vail Daily in December.

Mission accomplished.

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Chapdelaine earned silver in the duals and teamed up with fellow Ski and Snowboard Club Vail mogul skier Jiah Cohen to win the dual moguls team event on the final day of the most prestigious U20 international moguls competition on the planet last week in Almaty, Kazakstan.

“I’m super stoked,” the 19-year-old said. “I feel like I really just showed up and did what I wanted to.”

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“It was cool to be teamed up with Reese,” said Cohen, who migrated with Chapdelaine from Aspen to Vail several years ago.

“We have a lot of history skiing together,” he continued. “She charges for sure. She’s definitely one of the faster women in the field, which is sick.”

Even though Cohen and Chapdelaine were the second-seeded U.S. team, both liked their chances going in.

“When I told him earlier in the day, ‘we can win this,'” Chapdelaine recalled. “He was like, ‘we’re going to.'”

In the team duals competition, mixed-gender pairs compete one at a time, with girls facing each other first, followed by the boys. The aggregate score — not the head-to-head outcome — determines who moves on. In every round, both Cohen and Chapdelaine beat their opponents, but in the final against the host nation, Chapdelaine only gave her teammate a one-point cushion.

“I knew my opponent took out Porter (Huff), and he’s a super good skier, so I just knew I had to ski fast and make it down the hill first,” Cohen said of his mindset prior to that final run.

In the previous day’s dual, Cohen implemented a cork to back X aerial package, but said “it just wasn’t working out.” He’d placed 12th. On the final of the team duals, however, the 18-year-old kept it light, mimicking Chapdelaine’s back mute to back X combination.

“This course was pretty tough,” he said. “(I) tuned down the tricks a little bit so I could have a cleaner run.”

The Americans came away with a 42-28 victory. Cohen said the win meant more than his bronze from the team dual moguls at the Youth Olympics last January.

“Junior Worlds was a competition I’ve been aiming for since I was 12,” he said. “To get first place is so cool.”

SSCV skiers just miss individual moguls podiums

SSCV sent five athletes to World Juniors. SSCV’s Porter Huff and Abby McLarnon led the Americans in the opening individual moguls seven on Jan. 7 with a pair of fourth-place finishes.

“I definitely progressed as the comp went on and I got more comfortable on the course,” said McLarnon. “I do think it was some of my best skiing.”

Japan claimed two spots on the podium, with Yuma Taguchi taking gold and Kurea Mise earning bronze. Anastassiya Gorodko, ranked 10th in the overall World Cup standings last year, was the silver medalist. Chapdelaine and her SSCV teammate Katie Dreitlein finished ninth and 10th, respectively. The next day, Chapdelaine met McLarnon in the duals semifinal round.

“We’re pretty close,” Chapdelaine said. “She is really good, so I knew it would be a challenge. My play in that dual was to just go as fast as I could out of top air and keep up the speed, which worked out really well for me.”

Both launched a back cross top-air to back mute on the bottom, but Chapdelaine kept it clean and was able to claim the 21-14 win and advance to the finals, where she fell to Gorodko — who won a bronze medal at the 2021 senior World Championship. McLarnon came home with bronze.

“She’s so confident with her skiing and her airs,” McLarnon said of Chapdelaine, who is also her roommate. McLarnon moved from Steamboat Springs after “clicking” with SSCV mogul program director Freddy Mooney at last year’s Youth Olympics.

“His coaching style works really well with the way I receive information,” she said. “It was just the best move for my career.”

Nate Gendron (eighth) and Jack Petrone (ninth) were the top American males in the dual event as Huff and Cohen came in 11th and 12th, respectively. Considering a back injury derailed much of his spring, summer and fall, Cohen left Kazakstan — just his second competition back — with positive vibes.

“This year I’m just trying to get back into the competition mindset (and) learn how to compete again,” he said. Looking ahead, he’s hoping to win the overall NorAm Tour and perhaps even qualify for a World Cup at the end of the year. McLarnon will also focus on the four NorAm stops, where she’d like to consistently finish in the top-10. Last week’s global competition has done wonders for her confidence.

“My biggest takeaway is probably that I can compete with some of the best in the world for my age,” she said. “I’m right up there.”

Meanwhile, Chapdelaine already has punched two tickets to stops on the top stage: Waterville, New Hampshire on Jan. 24-25 and Deer Valley next month.

“That was my goal coming into the season,” she said. The accomplishment is all the more meaningful when reflecting on where she was mentally going into last year’s Deer Valley NorAm. Chapdelaine said she experienced “fear” and “mental blocks” with her top-air tricks.

“I put a lot of pressure on that as an event I had to do really well at in order to prove I should still be doing this sport,” she said. After a transformational conversation with her parents, Chapdelaine came to grips with embracing the adrenaline rush.

“At Deer Valley I kind of just said, ‘well, either I’m going to be scared for the rest of my life or I’m going to get over it and do what I’ve always wanted to do and get on the U.S. Ski Team and make World Cups,'” she said. “That was kind of the moment where I made the switch; I just decided it was OK if I was scared. Without that, I don’t think I’d be where I am today.”

Complete results available on fis-ski.com.