COPPER MOUNTAIN — In the first World Cup ski halfpipe contest since Olympic officials announced the sport’s inclusion in the 2014 Winter Games, the youngsters dominated.
The international athletes at Copper Mountain’s 22-foot superpipe proved their Olympic status Friday in a suddenly ski-centric U.S. Grand Prix contest rife with final-run drama, spectacular crashes and soaring athleticism. And while the veterans who carried the sport during its nascent years battled hard, it was the youngsters of the pipe who found glory.
On the women’s side, Brita Sigourney, a 21-year-old from Squaw Valley, Calif., sneaked a last-minute win from Canadian world champion Rosalind Groenewoud, who finished second ahead of Switzerland’s Virginie Faivre.
Among the men, Wing Tai Barrymore, a 19-year-old from Idaho, dominated with back-to-back doubles, a four-rotation 1260 and amplitude that dwarfs snowboarders. Aspen teenager Torin Yater-Wallace took second with a final run down the pipe that featured the same monster trick — an alley-oop flatspin double 900 — that gave Barrymore his first World Cup win. Breckenridge 18-year-old Duncan Adams took third.
The 16-year-old Yater-Wallace — who took more than an hour to provide his sample for drug testing, saying later “I really hate that stuff” — shrugs off the pressure of his now-Olympic track.
“It felt the same as any contest, really,” he said, cradling his oversized check for $5,000.
Still, he’s suddenly paying close attention to his International Ski Federation (FIS) standing.
“I really want to just keep racking up the FIS points,” Yater-Wallace said. “That used to not really matter to me.”
Halfpipe skiing became a World Cup event in 2009, with the first ever FIS freestyle skiing world championship last February in Park City, Utah. But Friday’s contest at the formerly all snowboarding Grand Prix at Copper Mountain marked not only the first competition of the 2011-12 season but the first World Cup ski halfpipe contest since the IOC in April tapped both ski halfpipe and ski slopestyle for the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, Russia.
Simon Dumont, a sort of godfather of halfpipe skiing who ranks as a veteran at 25, skied the pipe in his first X Games at age 14. He won his first X Games medal at 17. Now he’s a member of the U.S. Freeskiing Team, heading toward his first Olympics, a goal he has pursued for the last decade.
A few years ago, the hyper- competitive skier would have stomped bitterly away from a ninth-place finish. But on Friday, after he was surpassed by a gaggle of youngsters who grew up aiming for his place, Dumont was surprisingly mellow.
“This year, for me, I want to make sure I have fun,” said the Maine native who plans to spend the winter filming and skiing slopestyle before dedicating himself solely to halfpipe. “Next year, I’m going to buckle down and train very hard. This year, I’m trying not to let each contest get to me. It’s OK to sacrifice one year, I think. But next year, I’ll be pushing hard.”
Jason Blevins: 303-954-1374 or jblevins@denverpost.com
