COPPER MOUNTAIN — The biggest breakthroughs in skiing and snowboarding halfpipe in the past several years have been technical: dangerous, twisting, aerial feats that involve four rotations during a double backflip, all spun while grabbing and floating above 22-foot halfpipe walls.
While the famous double McTwist 1260 remains a gold standard for snowboarders, much like skiers’ double-cork 1260, the rapid pace of innovation that defined the last few seasons in the halfpipe seems to be slowing.
Every season for the past few years, new tricks were percolating through every skier’s and snowboarder’s halfpipe performance, pushing the sports to new and hazardous heights. This season however, may see a plateau in halfpipe progression.
“I really think the progression is going to slow down a little bit,” said Simon Dumont, a 25-year-old Maine skier whose halfpipe dominance over the past seven years is being tested by younger, more brazen athletes. Dumont, who has bounced back from a couple of crashes that should have ended his career, thinks the fearlessness of the younger, hungry-for-glory pack in his wake could ebb with the rise of even riskier tricks.
“A lot of these kids haven’t had those big falls yet,” he said. “I remember being that kid. I was there once. But those big falls, they change you. Once you hit that deck, your outlook changes a little.”
There is no chance the aerial antics of athletes in the snowy ditch will regress. Skiers and snowboarders are not going to suddenly abandon their hard-earned double-cork tricks. But there are signs that the path to gold may no longer be paved with points earned largely for bravado and technical mastery. The once golden run laden with four or five of the most technical, contorted tricks may no longer be the best.
Witness the first ski contest last weekend at Copper Mountain’s venerable Grand Prix. Sun Valley freeskier Wing Tai Barrymore earned gold without the once-mandatory double-cork 1260, and 17-year-old Breckenridge skier Duncan Adamstook third with a floating, style-drenched run that looked more like a champion’s giddy celebratory lap than a high-pressure, competitive throwdown.
The board riders, too, seemed to be pushing creativity, variety and poise over technical trickery. Louie Vito, who offered the most technical runs of the Grand Prix with three of the typically ubiquitous double-cork aerials and a massive frontside 1260, reached only second place. Winner Luke Mitrani threw down only one double trick among his five-trick run down the pipe.
The athletes seem to be sending a message that halfpipe skiing and snowboarding need to remain more an artful, personalized expression of athleticism than a spin-to-win test.
“The riders in both skiing and snowboarding, they want to make sure style and creativity remain rewarded in their sports,” said Jeremy Forster, the director of the U.S. Snowboarding and U.S. Freeskiing teams. “The riders will take it where they want to take it. We’ll see where that goes in 2014.”
Granted, this year is the “fun” time between the buckle-down competitiveness that will drive next season’s ski and snowboard halfpipe contests as athletes race toward Olympic glory at the 2014 Sochi Winter Games.
The recent plateau could be simply because “we are in between Olympic cycles,” U.S. Snowboarding coach Spencer Tamblyn said.
“It will ramp up again next year,” Tamblyn said. “Doubles will always be important, but creativity and variety within a run that has doubles is the key to success. Amplitude and flow is critical. You have got to be smooth, and you’ve got to go really, really big.”
The lessening emphasis on complex trickery gives the veterans an edge in a game they forged. Those pioneers, such as ski pipe’s Dumont or snowboarding pipe empress Kelly Clark, have felt the heat from teenagers who are pushing the sport to dizzyingly technical heights. But with more than a decade of competitive pipe experience, the veterans who carried their sport from its nascent niche years alongside silly stunts like shovel racing into Olympic dignity have an edge when it comes to style and poise.
“I’ve always said I’m not going to progress for progression’s sake if it doesn’t have style,” said the 28-year-old Clark, who won gold at Copper’s Grand Prix pipe contest Saturday. “We are always going to see a tension between progression and style, and I think that’s healthy for the sport and the athletes.”
Jason Blevins: 303-954-1374 or jblevins@denverpost.com
