Katy Perry and Juicy J’s 2013 chart-topping song “Dark Horse” blared over the sound system at Buttermilk as Maddie Mastro dropped in for her debut Snow League run.
Fresh off an FIS Crystal Globe, Mastro was anything but a dark horse.
Mastro, the 25-year-old from Wrightwood, California kicked off her qualifying run with a trick that has become her signature, a double crippler, then went with a backside 540 on her next hit. She threw a skyhook. A frontside 720 and a Haakon flip later, and Mastro came away from heat 1 with a score of 90 and a win. She was the only rider on the men’s or the women’s side of the contest to achieve a score of at least 90 all day.
“Well, I wanted to put one down first and kind of, hopefully take away a little bit of the pressure,” Mastro said in a post-heat interview. “I was pretty nervous up there, so I was like, I might as well give it a really solid try first run, and hopefully that will calm my nerves. Yeah, it worked. So that’s good.”
Mastro will be the number one seed headed into finals day. She will go head-to-head with Canadian rider Elizabeth Hosking in round one.
Japan’s Sena Tomita and Mitsuki Ono; China’s Xuetong Cai and Jiayu Liu; Korean Gaon Choi, and America teammate Sonora Alba will all compete on finals day as well.
On the men’s side, to little surprise, Ayumu Hirano will be the number one seed on finals day, after was propelled by a score of 88.25 in his second run of heat 2. The superstar from Japan took it easy on his first try, laying down a solid run, but well beneath the height of his abilities, as he kept the triple cork in his pocket. New Zealand’s Campbell Melville-Ives came out of nowhere to take the top spot in the second hat in his second run with a 86.75, surprising the rest of the field and forcing Hirano to elevate his next run. He stomped it, and secured both the one seed and his spot in the final.
Photo: Jamie Squire/Getty Images
Ruka Hirano, also from Japan but of no relation to Ayumu, will also be in the final. He’ll be joined by fellow Japanese riders Yuto Totsuka, Shuihiro Shigeno, and Ryusei Yamada; U.S. rider Alessandro Barbieri, and Korea’s Chaeun Lee. Lee had to be helped off the course after his final run, however, so it is unsure if he will be able to ride in the final.
Live coverage of The Snow League will start on Peacock March 8, 2025 at 11:30 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. A rebroadcast will go live on NBC March 29, 2025 at 1 p.m. Canadians can watch on CBC Gem and cbcsports.ca. In Asia, SPOTV will bring the Snow League to fans in Hong Kong, Korea, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. FUEL TV will air The Snow League to 18 countries across central and South America.