Xu and Qi start aerials season with a bang in front of home crowd

Last year's aerials World Cup winner, and overall freestyle ski World Cup runner-up, Xu Mengtao picked up where she left off in the women's event.

The 29-year-old former Olympic silver medallist scraped into the final in 12th place – the last available qualifying spot – but then blitzed the field in her second run in the showpiece to rack up a score of 105.53.

That was a massive 12.09 points clear of Belarus's Aliaksandra Ramanouskaya in second, with Laura Peel of Australia a further 6.79 points back in bronze.

In the men's event, Qi Guangpu led a Chinese one-two as his score of 130.77 was 5.10 clear of Jia Zongyang in the silver medal position.

Noe Roth of Switzerland rounded out the podium, 17.2 points behind the winner, as 2013 and 2015 world champion Qi started the season with a bang.

Sportsbeat 2019