Vail – Even without Shaun, the innovation at the 5-year-old Honda Session in Vail continued last weekend with the first 1260s landed in slopestyle competition.
With snowboarding king Shaun White relaxing and riding the magic carpet of post-Olympic gold sponsorship deals, the podium steps were cleared for the snowboarding elite who had spent years in the shadow of the gilded one.
“Really? Heck, yeah!” said TJ Schneider, the 26-year-old Canadian top-ranked boarder upon hearing of White’s absence. “That’s good news. It’s going to really open it up now. That means Andreas (Wiig) will win now. Wait a second. Is it possible for Shaun to win if he’s not here?”
While organizers lamented the hole left by snowsports’ most golden boy, they relished the chance for new riders to showcase their skills.
“Obviously, we want to see everyone here, but there’s a huge sense the doors are open wide this year,” said competition director Greg Johnson, a widely respected snowboarding pioneer who led the judges at snowboarding’s international debut at the Nagano Olympics.
Schneider’s prediction rang true as Wiig finally ascended to the top step of the podium at the event’s slopestyle contest. For two years the 25-year-old Norwegian has finished one step below White. But it was hardly an easy win.
“This year it seems there are so many new kids coming up and they have learned more technical tricks and they are more even with the top riders now,” Wiig said before his win. “I don’t think anyone can easily win anymore.”
Wiig’s trademark smoothness and fluidity over the massive mounds in Saturday night’s slopestyle contest delivered him a three-point win over Germany’s David Benedek and New Hampshire’s Chas Guldemond. But it was Benedek and Guldemond who made history.
The duo hit and landed 1260s (3 1/2 rotations) for the first time in a slopestyle competition, fueling the spin-to-win projections that this year’s X Games pipe and slopestyle contests will feature more than the tried-and-true, back-to-back 900s with a 1080 topper at the end. The “12” is out, and it’s likely that the winner of X this year will have it in their bag of tricks.
The Session’s rail contest featured not just one of the most innovative rail venues but equally creative athleticism by the youngest riders in the field. Ellery Hollings- worth, a 14-year-old from Connecticut and 17-year-old Lucas Magoon of Vermont emerged as winners, each taking home $4,000 in cash in the event, which awarded cash payouts every 15 minutes. The jam- style format allowed riders to shake off a stumble in the rails venue as well as build up sizable chunks of money in less than an hour.
