Snow or water landings, it doesn’t seem to make much of a difference for aerialist couple Quinn Dehlinger and Kaila Kuhn. The pair picked up two more wins Saturday afternoon in the men’s and women’s events, respectively, at the Utah Olympic Park’s U.S. Freestyle Ultimate Airwave Competition.
The event was Dehlinger and Kuhn’s first since late-March’s season-ending World Championships, where they both showed out. Kuhn swept the women’s individual and mixed team titles, and Dehlinger finished second in his individual competition. Dehlinger finished last season ranked 6th in the world and Kuhn 12th.
The couple each pushed the envelope with their degree of difficulty Saturday. Kuhn was one of two women to throw a triple, ‘landing’ a triple-twisting triple backflip, and Dehlinger competed the Hurricane, a full, triple full jump, for the first time. Fellow aerialist couple Lillis and Winter Vinecki provided the closest competition, finishing in second on both sides.
Vinecki was making her return from an injury she suffered during last season. She finished the 2023-24 season ranked second in the world.
The wins left Dehlinger and Quinn feeling validated in the work they’ve been putting in this summer. It will be all the more important for them to hit the ground running this World Cup season, with all five events frontloaded before the Milan Olympics and thus serving as qualifying competitions. Last year’s U.S. Freestyle Ultimate Airwave Competition women’s winner Xu Mengtao went on to win four World Cup competitions last season, including four of the first six and the first two.
“The work that I’ve put in on the Hurricane has paid off,” Dehlinger said. “I got him (Lillis) on the degree of difficulty. … Our raw scores were very, very similar.”
Dehlinger said it’s been a long summer, featuring primarily trampoline work, to ready this new jump. He’s hoping to have it locked in for the upcoming season and Games. He was glad — almost — that the conditions were a bit cloudy and windy Saturday because he knows they won’t be perfect in the winter.
Dehlinger is confident all of his water ramping will translate right into his skiing. The U.S. team will take a few weeks off the pools now before one more Park City training camp. They will water ramp in Australia right before heading off early to the first World Cup in Finland come early December.
“Last offseason, I was coming off an ACL injury, and that was a bummer. I came back from that strong, and to have a full summer of training going into the Olympic season is crucial and filling me with confidence,” Dehlinger said. “The plan is to transfer all of the jumps that I’ve been doing on water directly onto the snow and to get the degree of difficulty up as quickly as possible.”
Dehlinger wants to cement himself atop the sport this season with more wins. However, he said, if he’s able to land these tricks, he’ll be happy regardless of the end result.
Kuhn said she was thrilled to finally get over the top and grab her first podium result at the Ultimate Airwave. She felt she had to up her degree of difficulty to topple Vinecki, third placed Dani Loeb and the nine other women in the finals. She’s also feeling more ready than ever to throw triples and other tricks on the snow this winter after landing jumps in front of a crowd of about 100 at the Olympic Park.
“We’re not competing all the way through the summer, so this is a way that we can get into a competition mindset,” Kuhn said. “We’re all really healthy competitors and want to see each other do well. So, it’s really exciting to see everybody do their best tricks, and in front of a home crowd.”
Kuhn wants to keep dialing in her triples and upping her degree of difficulty as the season approaches. Her goals this year are to podium at a number of World Cups and secure her second Olympics bid. She finished eight in the individual competition in Beijing in 2022.
Dehlinger joked about some intra-team competition between he and Kuhn and Lillis and Vinecki. They’re in a constant battle for highest achieving couple on the team. Unfortunately, one of the four will be left off the mixed teams roster in Milan, where there are only two men and one woman competing.
“We’re trying to give Chris and Winter a run for their money and be an aerials power couple,” Dehlinger said.
