Aspen – Australia Day came to the Winter X Games on Thursday night, as Torah Bright showed a stacked field in the women’s snowboard superpipe competition just how they do things in the land down under.
Using a nearly flawless line through the Buttermilk Mountain pipe, the renowned technician from New South Wales laced her line with a pair of backside 720s – the second one “switch” – to win the first X Games gold medal by an Australian as her homeland celebrated its national holiday.
“I put it down for the Aussie cheering section,” said Bright, 20, of the rowdy crowd rooting her on alongside the pipe with an inflatable kangaroo. “They would run up the pipe and then down at the bottom when I finished. They were doing the same laps I was.”
Bright stole the spotlight from Aspen local and fan favorite Gretchen Bleiler, 25, who sought her third X Games gold medal since ’03, after skipping the event last winter to prepare for the Turin Olympics, where she finished second.
Bleiler’s first-run score of 91.00 points set the standard for the women in the best-of- two-run competition format before Bright’s second run score of 94.66 bumped her from the top step of the podium.
Third place went to Elena Hight, hailing from the unlikely snowboarding state of Hawaii, who used the first backside 900 ever landed by a woman in competition to post a score of 88.00. Hight, 17, is also credited with the first frontside 900 at age 13.
Even in defeat, Bleiler demonstrated the class that has earned her celebrity status in Aspen and the snowboarding world.
“People were throwing down. Torah’s run was insane and pretty much flawless,” Bleiler said. “Elena doing a backside 9 – are you kidding me? The level is just insane.”
For much of the field, the 900 was the trick of the night. Olympic gold medalist Hannah Teter fell on her first attempt at the trick before landing one on her second lap that only managed to score an 85.33 by the judges evaluating on “overall impression,” good for fourth place. Although Bleiler landed the move on her first run, she was unable to ride away cleanly from a 900 as she dropped for the final run.
Kelly Clark, the 2002 Olympic gold medalist and the only other woman in the field currently capable of landing the trick, also struggled, falling on each of her runs and settling for 10th place among the 10 finalists.
Bright changed the game by relying on the technical tricks she’s known for.
“I chose a very different routine because I didn’t want to be involved in the battle of 900s,” said Bright, who was fifth at the Turin Olympics. “Eventually I’ll start working on that, but for now I’m focusing on a lot of switch stuff. … Switch backside is the hardest rotation.”
Hall vs. Dumont
Maine’s Simon Dumont stepped up to Tanner Hall’s gloves-off challenge in the superpipe early Thursday. Hall repeatedly stomped his first hit, soaring some 20 feet above the deck after dropping into the 16-foot pipe switch.
The Pipe Prince buttered his 10s and just barely missed the top qualifying spot, thanks to Dumont’s disturbingly large and fluid airs. The finals contest tonight under the lights features the pair in what promises to be the most progressive pipe showdown in history.
New Hampshire upstart Colby West – who snuck past a dozen airborne veterans at last week’s U.S. Freeskiing Open to take third in the pipe – qualified fifth and he’ll likely best that standing in the finals. Breck newcomer Matt Phillipi eked into the 10th and final qualifying spot.
Bigger, better corners
Although the course is not entirely finished, the jumps and straightaway shots in the snocross venue are very similar to last year. One slight change are taller corners, which could enable high-drama and higher-consequence passing on the banked turns. The finals are Saturday night.
Scott Willoughby can be reached at 303-820-1993 or swilloughby@denverpost.com.
Staff writer Jason Blevins contributed to this report.
