Finland’s Janne Korpi and Jiayu Liu from China have won the second halfpipe contest of the LG Snowboard FIS World Cup 2009. They got along best with the difficult weather conditions and dominated the field in both runs. The qualification and the finals had to be held on the same day due to the heavy snowfall in the Saas valley. Janne Korpi demonstrated faultless runs (best 45,9 points) with the combination of BS 1080 and Cap 1080 in the halfpipe of the Allalin Freestyle Park. He left Kohdai Watanabe (44,1) from Japan and his teammate IIkka-Eemeli Laari (41,9) behind. Jiayu Liu convinced among the girls with 40,7 points ahead of Shiho Nakashima (39,7) from Japan and Sophie Rodriguez (38,2) from France.

After Janne Korpi hardly missed the first place in Saas-Fee in the last year he took home the victory this time: “It was pretty tough in the beginning today morning. The view was not that good and it was pretty windy. But after the first hits I got my confidence back and then it was great. And I had good wax on my board, which helped me to speed up in the pipes to do my tricks”. Also Watanabe was perplexed about his performance: “It is a great feeling and a very big surprise for me - I had never thought of reaching the podium here in Saas-Fee”.

The winner on the ladies side Jiayu Liu was really delighted about her victory at the tough competition: “I feel very cool now. It’s great to win a contest like this”. Also Shiho Nakashima from Japan was happy: „Jiayu was very strong today. I gave my best and am so happy now that the contest could take place.