Windy snowboarding gold medal for Anderson
PYEONGCHANG, SOUTH KOREA » Jamie Anderson will almost certainly spend more time gazing at her newest Olympic gold medal than watching replays of the slopestyle run she put down to win it.
Nobody, not even the Olympic champion, would want to re-live the ugliness that played out Monday on the sport’s biggest stage.
The day Anderson cemented herself as an alltime great by defending her Olympic title will also go down as one of the most unpleasant, dangerous days snowboarding has ever seen.
Shifting, bitter winds whipped tiny ice pellets across the iced- over jumps at the Phoenix Snow Park and stiffened the orange- colored wind socks in one direction, then another. Hundreds of numbed fans streamed toward the exits while the action was ongoing, and the stands were half empty as the afternoon wore on, with wind chills dipping to 5 degrees (minus-15 degrees Celsius) and below.
Twenty-five riders each took two trips down a course that, by many of their accounts, should not have been open for action. Of the 50 runs, 41 ended with a rider on her backside, or in a face plant, or, in the case of Canadian Spencer O’Brien and a few others, in a slow ride toward the bottom after simply pulling up because they couldn’t build enough speed to reach the crest of a ramp.
“All I wanted to do,” said fourth-place finisher Silje Norendal, “was sit up top and cry.”
This was not just sour grapes.
Even Anderson — the sport’s biggest gamer and its No. 1 big- day rider — conceded, “I’m not extremely proud of my run.” Her modest score of 83 resulted in a blowout of nearly seven points over silver medalist Laurie Blouin of Canada.
But really, what was Anderson to do? After the qualifying round was scrubbed due to wind a day earlier, all the riders were summoned back for a tworun final and ordered by their world ranking, giving the top-ranked American the privilege of going last.
After watching rider after rider fail to make her way down the course during Run 1, Anderson added a little wax to her board and stood on top, hoping for a 60- second stretch of calm that would allow her to simply stay upright.
“It was a lottery,” O’Brien said.
Two weeks ago, Anderson won the Winter X Games with a cab double cork 900 — two head- over-heels flips with 2½ twists mixed in. It was one of the gold standards in a sport that prides itself on — in fact, lives for — progression, sometimes at the cost of safety, sanity and everything else.
On this day, Anderson was never tempted to try that kind of trick. Her three jumps at the bottom consisted of a backside 540, a cab 540 and a front 720 — 1½ twists, 1½ twists and two twists. It was the sort of run that might’ve won a contest in 2008 — if the rest of the riders were having an off day.