Laax Open announces 2023 Date and New Additions
Chloe Kim at the 2022 Laax Open. Photo: @philippruggli via @laax
The LAAX OPEN is expanding: Europe's most prestigious snowboard contest is opening its doors to freeski. The internationally renowned event is thus adding another promising freestyle discipline to the programme. At Crap Sogn Gion mountain at 2,252 masl, 300 riders from all over the world will compete in front of the impressive 360° mountain panorama at the FIS World Cup from 18-22 January 2023.
The freeski athletes bring new momentum to walking their planks, but the concept is not really new, explains event director Donald Nader: “Freeskiers have been sharing the parks in Laax with snowboarders ever since parks were built there. Laax also committed to Freesking already by hosting the European Freeski Open from 2006-2011 and 2014-2016, so it was a natural thing to finally include them in the LAAX OPEN.”
Just as the freestylers in Laax have been tricking together over the one but always freshly shaped features in the four snowparks for years, the same will happen in slopestyle at the LAAX OPEN in 2023. The finals in snowboarding are set for Saturday, 21.01.2023, and those for freeskiing, for Sunday, 22.01.2023. The highlight is and remains the snowboard night final in the halfpipe (21.01.2023). In 2022, the to-be Olympic champions Chloe Kim and Ayumu Hirano wowed the crowd here, as did superstar Shaun White and Swiss local Jan Scherrer.
via LAAX