Wise goes for gold in halfpipe

PYEONGCHANG, South Korea—They give their bodies for this sport. Sometimes little pieces of their hearts and souls, too.

Maybe that’s why David Wise decided there was nothing left to lose Thursday when he stood atop a halfpipe that had sent one-third of the 12 skiers limping off with injuries, facing an allorrun after his ski bindings had failed him in his two previous trips down.

“We cranked my bindings up as high as they would go,” Wise said. “We’re like, ‘You know what, my leg’s coming off before the ski does.’” The skis stayed on. Wise put down the most difficult, technically precise run ever seen in the sport of halfpipe skiing. He scored a 97.2 to edge out his Olympic roommate and fellow American, Alex Ferreira, by .8 points to win his second straight Olympic gold medal. He and Ferreira gave the United States its fifth and sixth medals on the halfpipe—producing a glimmer of good news for a U.S. team that has struggled at these games.

Four years ago in Sochi, Wise won but freeskiing did not.

As the gold medalist and leader of his sport, Wise set out on a plan to make sure that wouldn’t happen again. His goal was to become the first halfpipe freeskier to put down double corks—two head-over-heels flips—in all four directions on the same run: forward spinning right; forward spinning left; backward spinning right; backward spinning left.

He did it last month at the Winter X Games, then again in his final run of the Olympics.

He made it look effortless, but it isn’t.

Spinning in an unnatural direction in the halfpipe, as U.S. coach Mike Jankowski put it, “is like throwing a baseball with your left hand if you’re right-handed.”