Maddie Mastro has clinched the first World Cup victory of her career at China’s Secret Garden. Mastro took first place in the women's Superpipe competition on December 8, 2024.
The 24-year-old rider from Wrightwood, California has been on the U.S. Snowboard Team since she was 15 years old, and debuted at the Olympics in 2018 as just a 17-year-old. While she’s been atop the podium throughout her World Cup career, the win over the weekend was her first top finish.
Mastro kicked things off with a double crippler, the same trick that wowed the crowd at the 2023 X Games. Her Run 2 score of 88.75 was enough to hold off China’s Xuetong Cai, who finished in second.
“I’ve got a lot of seconds and thirds in these World Cups and this is my first on top and am I happy about it," Mastro said in a press release from the U.S. Snowboard Team. “I came into this contest with a completely new game plan and just wanted to focus on doing my own thing. I had these goals of tricks I wanted to land and runs I wanted to put together and…it happened. This contest just set a new baseline for women’s snowboarding and I’m just really excited to be a part of it.”
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Another US Snowboard team rider that shares the same first name, teammate Maddy Schaffrick, had the only score all day that topped Mastro’s.
Schaffrick’s top run started off with a frontside stalefish, backside 540, crippler nose grab, and an alley oop 360. She finished if off with a switch backside 540 and a frontside 540. It was her first World Cup appearance in nearly 10 years. Schaffrick made the difficult decision to stop competing in 2015 when she was just 20 years old because of several big injuries, and the toll they took on her both mentally and physically.
“I wasn’t having fun anymore and felt extremely burnt out,” she said in an Instagram post. “I’ve spent the last 8 years learning about myself outside of snowboarding.”
She said in an Instagram post from May that she stayed connected to snowboarding by coaching groms, then slopestyle tour athletes, and then eventually the U.S. halfpipe team. It was a process that allowed her to witness what it takes physically, mentally, and spiritually to win in competitive snowboarding, and reminded her why she fell in love with it.
U.S. rider Bea Kim finished in seventh place. On the men’s side of things, Japan’s Yuto Totsuka finished atop the podium with a score of 95.50. Australian Scotty James came in second, and Japan’s Ryusei Yamada finished in third with a run of 87.75.
Next, the halfpipe riders head to Colorado for the Toyota U.S. Grand Prix at Copper Mountain. Qualifiers start on December 18.
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