Competition fierce among Olympic hopefuls, including pipe skiers, at Copper Mountain.
World-class halfpipe skiers steal the show at Olympic qualifier
COPPER MOUNTAIN» Olympic seasons see athletes push their sports to new levels, and that drive was on display Friday, with a consortium of the world’s best halfpipe skiers kicking off their quest for the PyeongChang Olympics with high-flying fireworks.
There were first-ever tricks. Best-ever runs. And fiery acrobatics. Under bluebird skies at Copper Mountain, the first halfpipe competition of the season ranked as one of the best ever.
“It’s such an honor to be a part of pipe skiing right now,” said David Wise, the Sochi gold medalist and top qualifier whose clinically precise back-to-back double-flipping 1260s earned him the win Friday. Wise is dedicating a portion of the winning check and sponsor bonuses to his sister’s One Leg Up On Life Foundation, which provides prosthetics to third-world kids.
Canadian Noah Bowman unleashed the first-ever switch double 1260 stuck in a pipe competition. The requisite doubleflipped, 3½-spun trick, which Bowman launches skiing in reverse, awed fellow competitors. Bowman, who learned the trick this year, landed it three runs in a row, finishing second.
“I wasn’t even fully planning on doing it today, but it was feeling good,” Bowman said. “We have been working really hard this summer and heading into the season with a lot of momentum. I feel it for sure.”
Canadian Simon D’Artois took third with three consecutive doubles in what he called “my best halfpipe run ever.”
Torin Yater Wallace, the Basalt Olympian who won the first Olympic halfpipe qualifier in Mammoth last season, flew higher than any other competitor with such massive airs that he ran out of pipe, spinning only four tricks compared with five by most others. After stomping a rare alleyoop, double-cork 1260, he pushed the trick with an added rotation — which would have been the first-ever alley-oop double 1440 seen in competition — on his final run and crashed hard.
“Running out of pipe. That’s the story of my life,” said the 22-year-old.
Winter Park’s Birk Irving and Crested Butte’s Aaron Blunck finished seventh and eighth in the nine-man finals, which saw New Zealand’s Nico Porteous drop out because of a knee injury and France’s Benoit Valentin hauled off in a sled after an ugly crash that injured his knee.
“This is definitely the most intense it’s ever been,” Bowman said of the pipe competition, which spurred skiers to dig into tricks typically reserved for later in the season. “This is the most stacked field there has ever been in pipe and it’s so good to be a part of it right now.”
France’s Marie Martinod, the 2017 X Games ski pipe champion and silver medalist from Sochi, won the women’s competition. Vermont’s Devin Logan’s six airs earned her second and pushed her a step closer to representing the U.S. in both the slopestyle and halfpipe competition in PyeongChang. China’s Kexin Zhang finished third.
Copper’s Grand Prix was the season’s first qualifying contest to make U.S. Freeskiing’s Olympic halfpipe team, but the Grand Prix contest at Mammoth last February marked the first chance for pipe skiers to qualify for the PyeongChang Winter Games. Skiers need to reach two podiums in the qualifying contests to make the Olympic halfpipe and slopestyle teams. After Copper Mountain, Yater Wallace, Wise, Telluride’s Gus Kenworthy, Avon’s Taylor Seaton, Logan and Sochi gold medalist Maddie Bowman have each reached one podium.
Snowboarders on Friday began their push toward the first-ever big air Olympic contest. Slopestyle snowboarders Jamie Anderson and Julia Marino qualified for Sunday’s big air finals. Arvada’s Chris Corning, Chandler Hunt, Judd Henkes and Ryan Stassel also will compete in the big air finals Sunday. Silverthorne’s Red Gerard and Steamboat Springs’ Nik Baden did not move into the first Olympic qualifying big air contest.
Seven of the country’s top men snowboarders and five women riders compete in snowboard halfpipe finals Saturday.