Baumgartner in the halfpipe: Satisfied with 15th place in Engadin!

Baumgartner in the halfpipe: Satisfied with 15th place in Engadin!

In the halfpipe final of the World Championships in the Engadine, Austrian freeskier Samuel Baumgartner took 15th place. Baumgartner scored 59.50 points in the first run, but suffered a fall in the second run. The gold medal was secured by 18-year-old New Zealander Finley Melville Ives with an outstanding 96.00 points. In the women's race, Briton Zoe Atkin was the winner.

Baumgartner, who finished 15th in the halfpipe in his first World Cup participation, said he was satisfied with his qualification for the final of the best 16 athletes. He opened the final and attempted a lot of risky driving on the last jump in the second run, which ultimately led to his fall. Despite the incident, Baumgartner plans to look to the future with optimism and focus on upcoming major events, such as the 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan and Cortina and the 2027 home World Cup in Montafon.

Austria's medal successes in Engadin

Austria showed a strong overall performance at the World Championships and won four medals. Lara Wolf and Arvid Auner each won silver in ski slopestyle and parallel slalom. Sabine Payer and Andreas Prommegger also secured a bronze card in the parallel team competition. Alessandro Hämmerle also contributed to the medal haul and won bronze in the snowboard cross.

Finley Melville Ives – A rising star

New Zealand winner Finley Melville Ives was born in Dunedin but has lived in Wānaka all his life. He comes from a family of snowboarders, which motivated him to ski in his early childhood. He was already on skis at the age of three and Fin was invited to a junior event for the first time when he was four. His career took off when he became part of Snow Sports NZ's National Development Program in 2018, regularly achieving outstanding finishes in competitions.

Melville Ives repeatedly impressed spectators at international competitions. After his first World Cup event in December 2022, where he finished 6th, and his participation in the 2023 Winter

Olympic qualification and future prospects

Qualification for freestyle skiing at the upcoming Milan-Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics will be via the Olympic Quota Rankings, which will be published on January 19, 2026. The ranking is created by the points that athletes collect from different competitions. This includes the FIS World Cup points collected between July 1, 2024 and January 18, 2026 as well as the ranking points from the World Championships in 2025.

For freestyle disciplines such as Big Air and Slopestyle, the best results count to assign quota places. This also affects Austrian athletes, who must maximize their performance by the qualification deadline on January 18, 2026 in order to be successful in the competition for the quota places. The Olympic Games promise an exciting time for athletes worldwide and especially for the next generations, including Baumgartner and Melville Ives.