THAT’S SHOWING THEM!
Bronze a bonus to skier’s stellar run
PYEONGCHANG For some athletes, an Olympic performance is like a crushing weight. There is four years of buildup and anticipation, and failure could mean never having the chance again.
For others, it is all gravy. Expectations are low, so go out and have fun.
Mikael Kingsbury lived the former case, and on Sunday at Phoenix Snow Park, he watched a teammate live out the latter.
Kingsbury, the greatest moguls skier ever who won gold on this mountain six days ago, was standing at the bottom of the ski slopestyle course, with nothing on his chest — in zero-degree temperatures — but an M made out of bright green tape. His moguls teammates Philippe Marquis and Marc-Antoine Gagnon had an A and B on their chests, respectively. The initials were in support of Alex Beaulieu-Marchand, who was up at the top of the mountain, dealing with a surgically repaired knee and a tight back. He didn’t care about winning a medal, the 23-year-old from Quebec City would say later. He just wanted to show what he could do.
He did that, all right. Beaulieu-Marchand, the only one of 12 skiers in a chaotic slopestyle final to manage three clean runs, scored a 92.40 with his second, which included a perfectly executed triple flip on his last jump for the exclamation mark. That put him in silver medal position at the time, and though American Nick Goepper slipped past him with a 93.60 in his final attempt, Beaulieu-Marchand was able to sweat out the final two skiers, neither of whom were clean, to hang on for the bronze. Norway’s Oystein Braaten had scored 95.00 in his first run, and it stood up for the gold.
Beaulieu-Marchand said afterward that he wasn’t stressed during those final runs, and I even think he meant it.
“I came here to show the world what I can do on my skis, and that’s what I did,” Beaulieu-Marchand said. “You know, if the others would have landed and bumped me into fourth or fifth place, I would have been happy anyway, because I just skied the best that I’ve skied in my life today. That’s what was important for me.”
“I guess I could be ‘glad’ that they didn’t land” — he used finger quotes for the “glad” part — “but that’s not true, that’s not how I see it. It’s cool that I got the bronze medal, but I’m just more happy about how I skied.”
How he skied, in the madness of a slopestyle final in which skiers were falling on jumps, and off rails, and in the case of top qualifier Oscar Wester of Sweden, just toppling over mid-run for some reason, was plenty impressive. Ski slopestyle is a wildly awkward-looking discipline, with the competitors navigating the same course that looks natural for snowboarders. It’s like trying to shoot baskets with a football, but when done properly, the results are spectacular. See: Beaulieu-Marchand, Alex.
“The jumps I was landing so consistently, those are jumps that I barely practise,” he said. “I did more triple flips today than I did in my entire life.” The various injuries had limited his practise time, and so he ended up with runs the likes of which he wasn’t doing in training, let alone competition, to say nothing of the freaking Olympics. “It’s just unbelievable, I’m so happy I put it all together,” he said.
Beaulieu-Marchand almost had some Canadian company on the podium. Evan McEachran’s first-run 89.40 had him in medal position through half the competition, but he couldn’t improve on it in his final two attempts, and finished sixth. Teal Harle went the opposite way, with mistakes on his first two finals and a clean final attempt that scored 90.00, good for fifth.
Though he was 12th in ski slopestyle at Sochi 2014 as just a teenager and showed all kinds of promise, the injuries of the past few years caused Beaulieu-Marchand to, among other things, hit the gym and use the services of a sports psychologist. He sounds, at 23, like he could do that job himself. An Olympic bronze medal performance, and then he was just out here dropping perspective bombs.
“I was just here for my skiing. I’ve been through the hard times,” he said. “I think my mindset was, I’m not an Olympic medal, or any medal, away from happiness.”
And so, Beaulieu-Marchand said, he had nothing to lose.
“I wanted to show the world my skiing, and I did, and it got me a bronze medal, and I’m super happy about that.”
If the others would have landed and bumped me into fourth or fifth place, I would have been happy anyway, because I just skied the best that I’ve skied in my life today. QUEBEC SKIER ALEX BEAULIEU-MARCHAND