BEST TRICK
Whiskey Flip gets really sick reviews
Carbondale’s Peter Olenick qualified third in the ski superpipe with his one-of-a-kind inverted double flip 540-degree spinning trick. A cousin of Jon Olsson’s Kangaroo Flip, Olenick’s 3-week-old trick, which he calls the Whiskey Flip, is the first hit in his pipe run, requiring a massive boost off the lip. He travels down the pipe in a flat spin but adds a “crooked double back to forward” landing. “I’ve been hearing from judges and people watching that it’s the sickest thing they’ve seen in the pipe,” Olenick said. Yeah, it’s sick.
AGE MATTERS
Old man Thovex, 24, wants biggest air
Veteran Candide Thovex – the Flying Frenchman – qualified fourth in the ski superpipe with his signature spins and switch pipe entries. Thovex, at 24, is the old man of the pipe. The pioneer, who failed to qualify for last year’s contest, has everything to prove. “This year I will go more switch and try to change the runs. One dropping normal and one dropping switch,” he said, his goggles barely covering a bloody nose delivered in Keystone’s terrain park two days ago. “This year I was safe, just making sure I could qualify. For the finals I will try to go for the biggest air.”
MORGAN’S WORLD
All shooting to unseat Morgan
At practice Thursday, 32 riders got to sample the snocross course and 31 had the same goal: unseat the king, Blair Morgan. Mild-mannered and soft-spoken, Morgan is anything but when he mounts one of the six Ski-Doo machines he travels with. He’s only missed the X Games’ snocross podium once in nine years and for five has stood on the top step. “I already have a bull’s-eye on me and it’s getting bigger and bigger as I win more,” he said. “I’m definitely feeling the pressure these days.”
CRASH OF THE DAY
“Blaze” fires across course, headfirst
In the X Games’ first snowmobile freestyle competition, third-ranked Jimmy “Blaze” Fejes stole the show in qualifying – and the breath of everyone watching – with a staggering stumble. The Anchorage, Alaska, sledneck under-rotated a backflip and drove his sled’s skis into the flat tabletop jump about halfway through his 75-second ride. Fejes flew over the bars and lawn-darted himself into the snow chinfirst with his pilot-free 450-pound machine barely missing him as it bounced and rolled down the jump’s landing. He was slow to get up and slower to limp off the snowy course with what appeared to be a back injury.
ATTRITION
Freestyle machines claim top drivers
In a debut event that quickly became the bloodiest of the day, four sled-taming athletes emerged from 10 in the snowmobile freestyle contest. Even in qualifying, the course of jumps claimed the second- and third-ranked riders: Breckenridge’s Jay Quinlan and Alaska’s Jimmy Fejes. Where Fejes was lucky to limp away from his horrific failed backflip, Quinlan fumbled a relatively simple air to stack hard on a wall of snow. Sunday night’s final will feature head-to-head and back-to-back backflipping, with Idaho’s Heath Frisby showing the most sled steeze. He whipped out his backflips and linked his backward somersaults over consecutive hits. Chris Burandt of Kremmling, Norwegian Aleksander Nordgaard and Swede Daniel Bodin will have to pick up their game to best Frisby.
