Calgary’s Rosalind Groenewoud (Roz G) has been named the 2010 AFP (Association of Freeskiing Professionals) Overall Women’s Champion for the second year in a row. Roz had an impressive results year in both halfpipe and slopestyle, edging out Dania Assaly in 2nd and Sarah Burke in 3rd.
Roz had a strong year in Superpipe competitions, with 4 podiums including one X-Games and Euro X-Games. It was those four podiums that placed Roz 2nd in the AFP Superpipe rankings. In slopestyle Roz finished strongly in 8th place in the AFP rankings. Where skiers are mostly specializing in their competition disciplines, Roz has been successful in both disciplines of women’s competition.
No stranger to adversity, Groenewoud, who lived in Ecuador during elementary and middle school, showed her true colours in 2008 when she competed at the Orage Masters for Rossignol. “I left a lot of blood on the course. I was told they had to shovel away several garbage bags of bloody snow. My face was smashed up and swollen and I had stitches in my mouth plus black eyes… After x-rays, stitches and exams, I asked the doctor at the whistler hospital if I could still compete that night in Big Air and he said, ‘well…there is no physical reason…’ So I grabbed a taxi back to my hotel, took a hot shower to get the blood off me, found clean clothes and stumbled over to the Big Air Finals site to compete. I’d won qualifiers for females and as it was the first time there was a female category for big air, practically nothing would have kept me away.”
Last year, Groenewoud was one of the skier members of the judging panel for the Orage Masters. “That gave me a different perspective and appreciation for all the tremendous effort that goes into an event. I was reminded firsthand that judging is hard! Even at an “anti-comp” where the judging format was so relaxed and non-traditional, you know the skiers really want to win those prizes so you’re trying to help to choose the right winner.”
Roz is now studying at Quest University and is a member of the Canadian Halfpipe Ski Team and hoping that half pipe skiing will be welcomed into the Olympics in 2014 so she can bring home gold for Canada. Until the IOC clue in to what an incredible sport ski-pipe is, the team are travelling together as much as possible, competing in the X-Games, European Open, European X-Games and WSI.
