For complete coverage of 2010 Olympic Skiing, including events, competitors, schedules, and news go to the 2010 Olympic Skiing Guide.
A look Back at 2009 World Cup and World Championship Men's Moguls Competition
Freestyle moguls looks terrifyingly bone chattering with a steep slope of manmade moguls which are allowed to be up to almost 4 feet high. If that's not bad enough two "air moguls", or jumps are built into the course - one about 1/2 way down and the other close to the bottom. The goal is to ski down through the bumps as fast as possible doing tricks off the 2 jumps.
As I've said before a lot of Freestyle skiing is determined by judges interpretation of the athletes performance rather than just on speed. In the moguls the competition requires two sets judges - turn judges to judge the skiing and turning in the moguls and jump judges to consider the jump style, difficulty and balance.
Freestyle moguls is the most difficult of the Freestyle events in that it requires the art of skiing bumps combined with the gymnastics of aerials. Many of the mogul contenders have come out of the alpine race scene but have specialized in moguls in their professional careers.
Let's take a look at the 2009 Men's mogul competition leader board and the 2009 Freestyle World Ski Championship Mogul event to see who may be the favorite, or who is a viable underdog to watch in the 2010 Winter Olympics Freestyle Men's Mogul competition.
The 2009 World Cup Men's Mogul Competition Standings (as determined on the FIS World Ranking List):
Name Nation Points
BILODEAU Alexandre CAN 842
COLAS Guilbaut FRA 557
MARQUIS Vincent CAN 448
LUUSUA Tapio FIN 336
KASHIMA Sho USA 301
DENEEN Patrick USA 277
MORSE Michael USA 275
GINGRAS Maxime CAN 258
TSUKITA Yugo JPN 256
SMYSHLYAEV Alexandr RUS 239
BENNA Anthony FRA 231
ROUSSEAU Pierre-Alexandre CAN 227
BJOERNLUND Jesper SWE 221
NISHI Nobuyuki JPN 207
OCHS Pierre FRA 175
What Can We See
Looking at this list one very important note is something you don't see. In 2009 there were 8 mogul events in which Alexandre Bilodeau won 4 had two 2nds and missed the podium in only 2 with 4th and - in the World Ski Championships he finished down in 8th - yet you can see he was still almost 300 points ahead of Colas. What if he scored at Inawashiro!
The 2009 Freestyle Men's Moguls World Ski Championships:
1 DENEEN Patrick USA 23.412 LUUSUA Tapio FIN 21.89
3 MARQUIS Vincent CAN 21.66
4 NISHI Nobuyuki JPN 21.62
5 GINGRAS Maxime CAN 21.42
6 KASHIMA Sho USA 21.11
7 TSUKITA Yugo JPN 20.93
8 BILODEAU Alexandre CAN 20.86
9 KIRAMO Arttu FIN 20.40
10 SHARIFULLIN Ruslan RUS 20.22
11 SPETT Per SWE 19.94
12 COLAS Guilbaut FRA 16.21
13 OCHS Pierre FRA 13.65
14 VOLKOV Andrey RUS 10.62
15 REIHERD Dmitriy KAZ 10.44 [br]
What Can We See
The top 8 finishers and 2 others in the 2009 Freestyle World Ski Mogul Championships all appear on the World Ranking List. Vincent Marquis is the only one who turns up in the top 3 and wouldn't you know he'll be on his home court at the 2010 Vancouver Games. Of course, for Pat Deneen Vancouver isn't too far from home to look for another gold medal.
