It wasn’t the clean sweep of eight years ago, but a pair of Americans topped the men’s freeski slopestyle podium on Wednesday morning after Alex Hall soared to Olympic gold ahead of teammate Nick Goepper, who took the silver.
Sweden’s Jesper Tjader won the bronze ahead of Andri Ragettli, the defending world champion from Switzerland who qualified in first place but ended up in fourth on another bitterly cold morning in the mountains roughly 120km northwest of Beijing.
Twelve entrants made three trips apiece down the 665-metre course filled with rails, jumps and obstacles and an eye-catching replica of China’s Great Wall with the best score counting towards their final position.
Hall, a 23-year-old born in Fairbanks, Alaska, wasted no time setting the target, putting down a spectacular opening run for a score of 90.01 that none of his rivals could approach.
He punctuated it with a sensational final jump known as the right side double 1080 pretzel one, halting his rotation in mid-air before reversing his spin and landing cleanly, a trick Hall said he learned in the fall.
“I definitely knew I wanted to try the trick after making it to finals but I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to do it,” he said. “I’ve been doing it a little bit but it’s still a really, really hard trick for me just because it’s hard to judge the rotation and really tough when I don’t know my speed exactly and it’s been a little tough with wind this week.”
Goepper, who was bidding for a complete set of Olympic slopestyle medals after taking bronze in 2014 and silver in 2018, went into second with a score of 86.48 after the best of the middle attempts.
Neither of the American leaders could improve on their scores on their final trips and the outcome hung in the balance until the final run of the morning when Ragettli, who returned from an ACL injury to win slopestyle gold at last month’s X Games, was undone by a missed takeoff and shut it down early.
Hall, Alaska-born but who grew up in Switzerland while his parents taught at the University of Zurich and now lives in Salt Lake City, won slopestyle silver at the 2016 Youth Olympics, then bronzes at last year’s world championships and the X Games. Now the sport’s most prestigious title is his.
“It definitely was the best slopestyle run I’ve ever done, mainly because it embodied everything I love about skiing and how I approach skiing and I didn’t fade away from that to try and maybe get bigger scores or something,” Hall said. “I just kept it true to myself, and I think that’s the most important part about our sport is just doing it for the love and doing it how you want to do it and not changing that.”
Colby Stevenson, the 24-year-old from Park City, Utah, who returned from a near-fatal car crash in 2016 that left him in a coma to win silver in big air last week, made a few too many mistakes on the upper rail sections on his final run and finished in seventh. That denied the Americans the podium sweep they achieved at the 2014 Sochi Olympics, when Joss Christensen, Gus Kenworthy and Goepper won the gold, silver and bronze, respectively.
“Just making the Olympic team was such an honor after everything I’ve been through with the car crash,” Stevenson said. “It just seemed like stars had to align, and they definitely did.”
He added: “I am so happy to show my stuff on the world stage and ski the way that I did. It wasn’t exactly what I wanted today, but that’s how it goes, man, when you’re laying it all on the line. Give it your best and make sure to have fun. You don’t want to get too upset if you don’t do well. We’re living it.”
It marked the 20th time the United States has gone one-two in the history of the Winter Olympics and the first since the men’s freeski halfpipe in 2018.
