Putting big air back in their sails
After windy weather wreaked havoc on slopestyle, women boarders get to show off
PYEONGCHANG, SOUTH KOREA— It was a spectacle worthy of its stage: As Austria’s Anna Gasser unfurled her third and final jump of the morning — the 1,080-degree-spinning marvel that would ultimately clinch the gold medal in women’s Olympic big air snowboarding — she raised her hands in ecstatic triumph.
The victory was hers. But the exuberance seemed to run through the entire elite field. Ten days earlier, the world’s best women’s snowboarders had been subjected to an Olympic injustice. There was only one consensus after the windblown final of women’s slopestyle snowboarding was held in ridiculously wind-blown conditions that prevented the world’s best athletes from showcasing their best tricks: The event never should have happened.
Not when conditions were so difficult that organizers had to pare down the number of runs per competitor from three to two. Not when just five of 25 riders made it down their first run without falling. Not when the riders were openly calling it “scary” and a “(bleep)-show.” Not when Gasser, the pre-Olympic favourite to win, failed to make it down cleanly on either of her two runs, an aberration that could only be blamed on the weather.
Said Gasser that day: “Yes, it should have been postponed. We tried to speak to officials but the Olympics put us under pressure to do it today.”
Even Thursday, more than a week after the fiasco, its memory stoked bitterness.
“Slopestyle definitely put a damper on things for us. I feel like we were kind of robbed of an event,” said Canada’s Spencer O’Brien.
There was no going back, of course, no re-run imminent. But the inaugural Olympic inclusion of big air, which saw its Thursday final played out under ideal conditions and sunny skies, was framed as a redemption of sorts, not only for Gasser, who reasserted her greatness with gold, but for a sport grateful to finally get the opportunity to show its best stuff to a global audience.
Jamie Anderson of the U.S. won silver, while Zoi Sadowski Synnott of New Zealand landed bronze. But the sport at large was a big winner, too.
“I think big air definitely made up for (slopestyle),” said O’Brien. “The ladies definitely showed the world what we’re capable of, and where women’s snowboarding is at.”
Neither of Canada’s contenders in the 12-strong final were at their best when it mattered. Laurie Blouin, a little more than a week after she recovered from an accident that landed her in hospital to win silver in slopestyle, arrived in the three-run final with the fourth-best qualifying score. But another injury in training —“Just a bruise on my bum,” she said — was exacerbated by a fall on her backside on her first jump. After limping off and falling again on her second jump — this in an event where one’s two best scores are combined — Blouin passed on the opportunity to jump a third time and finished 12th.
“I guess I wasn’t stressed enough. I think I was just too chill at the top,” Blouin said. “I couldn’t put one down. After falling on my first one, that was, like, heavy for my bum.”
O’Brien, who finished ninth, said her practice runs were sub-par — “Sometimes you don’t have it” — which led her to jump more conservatively than she might have liked.
“A little bit of a disappointing performance for me,” she said.
Still, even in that moment of personal sadness, O’Brien could see the bright side. Long an advocate for snowboarding’s inclusion in the Olympics — and for women’s inclusion in big air, which had been a male-only domain until recently — she looked at Gasser’s triple-rotation masterpiece and marvelled at how far her sport had travelled in the span of her career.
“I’m just so proud of these women and where we’ve taken it,” O’Brien said. “The level is just incredible. I’m just so stoked.”