Mammoth Mountain, CA—Five years in and we can abandon all clichés. There was no electricity in the air, no overarching vibe that traveled through the competitors. It was business, most had been here before, and some had even won. The riders knew their place was up on the quarterpipe, pointing it from the top of the run-in. The specifics would always change of course. It was the World Quarterpipe Championships, anything could happen. But the competitors knew if they were there, charging into that 30-foot wall of snow, everything else would fall into place.
2025 saw the addition of two awards, and with that, a change of strategy. The overall winners still took home five grand, but there were smaller, more nuanced prizes that were up for grabs: best handplant and the Yeti Who Did It Cooler Award, the best method and best mctwist for men and women respectively. So, there was a split. Those who had their eyes set on gold—or a large novelty check—boosted with the kind of recklessness required for conquering a quarterpipe. Those who wanted a smaller—but no less impressive—piece of the pie began the handplant wars.
It started with Jack Wiley, the first to put a hand to coping on the extension. Stefi Luxton followed suit shortly after with an andrecht and after that the floodgates were open. Keegan Hosefros and Dustin Craven worked towards backside plants while Naima Antolin and Darrah Reid-McLean gunned for the frontside version. It was interesting to see. Was it because there was money on the line? Maybe, but that’s just speculation. Whatever the reason, it seemed the handplant warriors were going tit-for-tat on the coping throughout the day. There were a few plants though that stood out among the rest. Stefi did a Japandrecht to win for the women while Nik Baden took the top spot for the men with, “maybe the best mandrecht ever done,” according to Pat Bridges.
If the handplanters were fueling off each other, so were the other jumpers. A twelve-foot air only elicits a thirteen-foot air in response. The additions keep stacking until a beautiful crescendo is reached. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Qualifiers were only just ending, and there was no clear frontrunner going into finals.
It was a self-tap system and the line between confidence and hubris was thin. But for those who stayed, and for those who deserved to stay, it was magical. Magic, on second thought, maybe the wrong word. Magic implies a mystery, something unexplainable. But there was nothing unexplainable about what was happening in the finals: The straighter the line the higher the air. It’s not magic, it’s simple physics.
Sumner Orr kept going bigger, kept flipping slower. The mctwists were beautiful, beyond textbook. He kept finding the absolute top of the transition on his landings, never taking it to flat…well, not to the flat bottom. Sumner’s final two mctwists both caught the deck and since he was recovering from a broken back, the self-tap was justified.
Like last year, finals evolved into super-finals. The field weeded itself out and a few brave soldiers stood taller than the rest. Teddy Rauh was there too. For both the men and the women, the field narrowed to two. Jess McGregor, in a debut performance, fully handled the wall and everything that came with it, earning herself a Nixon Best Time award. Unfortunately, though, it wasn’t enough to beat Sonny Alba. Frankly, it was her event to lose, and if you can mctwist as she can, you’re not losing.
For the men, it came down to Raibu Katayama and Yuki Kadono. Two former world quarterpipe champions who were looking for a second title. This, more than anything, was when the riders knew their places. It was Raibu and Yuki, going air for air, ending this quarterpipe championship the way all other quarterpipe championships have ended, with a few final, tense moments where the crowd and the music and the sidelined competitors all fall into the same rhythm. They hush together and they cheer together. They hold their breath in tandem as the riders fly through the air, trying to reach new heights and potentially break world records. Raibu dropped first, hunched over as he tucked his way down the run-in. The commitment is admirable and you have to wonder if he’s pushing the fear aside or if he simply has none. And then he’s off and flying. There was no air-run, no sketchiness that needed to be overcome. Instead, what the crowd saw was undoubtedly the highest method of the day. What Yuki saw was a call to action. He dropped. It was a make-or-break moment. I don’t know what the judges were thinking but from the side, it seemed like Raibu had inched ahead, if only slightly, in the standings. Yuki needed something big, something more than just an air. The crowd watched as he charged in with the same reckless abandon we had seen a moment earlier from Raibu. And just like that, he was off. If you looked closely you could see his board slip on the lip, rotating him faster than he expected to. Yuki had wanted a five but the last one-eighty was inevitable. For a moment it looked like he wouldn’t find his feet. For a moment it seemed like Raibu would take it. But the moment passed and Yuki put base to snow and rode away, switch and dumbfounded. His hands over his mouth as the crowd screamed around him. The tension broke and what Yuki had achieved was undeniable. It was business. Yuki had been there before. He knew his place.
The World Quarterpipe Championship was supported by Mammoth Mountain, Ikon Pass, Yeti, Skullcandy, Sun Bum, Nixon, and Death Grip Gloves.