Chris Corning competes at the 2019 U.S. Grand Prix at Mammoth Mountain on March 7, 2019 in Mammoth, Calif.
Olympian Chris Corning is two-for-two in podium finishes to start the 2019-20 big air snowboarding world cup season.
The defending Crystal Globe winner in slopestyle captured third place in Saturday’s big air competition in Modena, Italy, to go along with his win in the season opener at the Winter Games NZ at Cardrona Alpine Resort.
Although it’s still early in the season, there are only two stops left on the world cup circuit for big air snowboarding, which means the 20-year-old from Silverthorne, Colorado, is already in great position to challenge for the top spot, sitting in first place with 1,600 points.
Corning toyed with the lead off and on throughout the day. Teammate Judd Henkes had the second-best first run of all the finalists, scoring an 87.25 to put him just behind Canada's Nicolas Laframboise. Corning, the only other U.S. rider to make the final, responded in a big way with his second run, however, scoring an 86.75 to combine with a first-run score of 79.50 and bump him to the top of the leaderboard with a 166.25 with the competition halfway over.
But midway through the third and final set of runs, however, Corning was in third place. He needed a big final run to overtake LaFramboise or Canada's Mark McMorris and move up on the leaderboard but didn’t quite make it.
LaFrambiose took first with a combined 172.50 points and McMorris second with 168.00 points, just a hair better than Corning. Henkes finished in fifth place.
Karen Price is a reporter from Pittsburgh who has covered Olympic sports for various publications. She is a freelance contributor to TeamUSA.org on behalf of Red Line Editorial, Inc.
