Snowboarding: Kiwi grabs bronze at worlds

Shelly Gotlieb picked a slopestyle bronze medal at the world snowboard championships. Photo / Getty Images

New Zealand's Shelly Gotlieb has won a slopestyle bronze medal on the final day of the world snowboard championships in La Molina, Spain yesterday.

Gotlieb qualified for the final ninth while teammate Stefi Luxton nailed her second run to qualify in fifth place after crashing on her first attempt.

Halfpipe specialist Kendall Brown just missed out on slopestyle the final, finishing 10th in qualifying.

In the final Gotlieb was first to drop, and pulled it all together for a solid run including a Cab 540 to Backside 360 to Backflip, cementing herself in contention for the title and finishing the first run in third place.

She knew she was guaranteed a podium before she dropped for her second run, and was planning on going for gold with a Backside 720 on jump two.

It wasn't to be however, as she lacked the speed necessary to pull it off coming out of jump one.

Luxton landed her jump section with style in her first run, however a sketch on the quarterpipe had her in fifth place.

Her second run saw her landing a Frontside 540, but unfortunately she went down on the last rail feature, still finishing the event with a career-best finish of seventh position.

The Women's event was won by 2010 world tour champion and junior world champion Enni Rukjarvi from Finland with a 540 and two 360s, while Seppe Smits took out the men's title with a convincing second run which included a Frontside 720 to Backside 1260 to Cab 1080.

Top 16 results for New Zealand at the world championships are:

3rd Women's slopestyle - Shelly Gotlieb

4th Women's halfpipe - Rebecca Sinclair

7th Women's slopestyle - Stefi Luxton

10th Women's slopestyle - Kendall Brown

13th Men's halfpipe - Mitchell Brown

13th Men's slopestyle - Stef Zeestraten

- NZPA