ASPEN — Two-time X Games ski superpipe champion Kevin Rolland didn’t just wait for his last of two runs Friday night to qualify for today’s finals. He waited for the last hit. His massive double 1260 pushed the defending champ from 18th to fifth, knocking New Zealand’s Jossi Wells off the bubble and out of the finals.
Aspen’s Torin Yater Wallace also waited for his final lap to reach the finals, throwing a clean albeit reserved set of tricks that left him in third.
“I don’t think there’s one person competing today who couldn’t win,” Yater Wallace said of 16 pipe skiers who were vying for eight slots in today’s finals. “Everyone is skiing really well.”
David Wise of Reno, Nev., led after the first round and threw down a dominant 92-point run on his second — including a switch first hit reminiscent of pipe pioneer Tanner Hall — to secure his top position for the finals.
Canada’s Justin Dorey finished second, and Simon Dumont, an 11-year X Games veteran and one of the winningest halfpipe athletes of all time, eked into the finals in eighth.
Willett’s day. Of the eight boarders to advance to tonight’s slopestyle finals, a familiar name returned in Eric Willett. The Breckenridge rider had a full day Friday between slopestyle and big air.
In the morning slopestyle, he qualified fifth with a 70.66-point ride on his third run. Willett, 24, comes in after winning the Dew Tour stop last week in Vermont, this coming off his ninth-place finish last month at the Dew stop in Breckenridge. His best finish in Aspen was second in the 2010 slopestyle when he was a rookie. He was eighth last year.
The 2006 Summit High School grad then went back to work in the big air event Friday night.
He struggled in the finals and couldn’t come back on his final jump. He finish fourth behind gold medalist Mark McMorris, who landed the first backside triplecork 1440.
Willett had the best score in the first round (a 44 out of a possible 50) with a switch, doublecork backside 1260.
Colorado day. For other members of the Colorado contingent competing Friday, skicross racers Chris Del Bosco of Vail qualified fifth and Aspen’s Casey Puckett was 14th. The finals are scheduled for noon Sunday. In the boardercross qualifier, Cleve Johnson of Basalt came in at 11th with his 1 minute, 36:978 second run.
Footnotes. Last year’s snowboard slopestyle winner Sebastien Toutant qualified third Friday, while McMorris had the top run. The finals are tonight at 7:30. … Other finals today include the women’s ski superpipe at 11 a.m., the boardercross starting at 2 p.m. for the men and women, and the ski big air finals at 7.
Jason Blevins and David Krause, The Denver Post
