ASPEN — Nearly a year removed from the Sochi Olympics, the world’s best snowboarders are reconvening this week for the Winter X Games at Buttermilk.
“Very challenging,” was their summation of the difficult showing for the top Americans in Sochi.
“There was a halfpipe contest. Some guys landed and did well, and some didn’t. That’s just the way it goes,” said Danny Davis, whose disappointing performance in a rutted Russian halfpipe came just after his first gold medal at 2o14 Winter X Games.
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No Americans reached the podium in Russia, a first since the decidedly American-bred snowboarding halfpipe landed in the Olympics in 1998.
Perhaps most disappointing was Shaun White, the two-time gold medal Olympian whose last-minute decision to drop from the debut of Olympic slopestyle to focus on the halfpipe proved a losing strategy.
“It was a frustrating circumstance for me,” White said Wednesday. “It was a really big deal for me to try to go back to the Olympics and try to three-peat in halfpipe, and I took on a lot trying to do slope as well as pipe. I definitely learned some lessons, and I feel better off than before in a way. It was a learning experience.”
With 23 X Games medals, White is a dominant force in the halfpipe, where he will compete Thursday night against his U.S. Olympic teammates Davis, Taylor Gold and Greg Bretz as well as the Japanese duo of Ayumu Hirano and Taku Hiraoka, who won silver and bronze, respectively, in Sochi. This is White’s first competition in the halfpipe since Russia.
“It will be good to refresh after everything that happened in the Olympics and get back in the mix,” White said.
First gold. California’s Olympic champion freeskier Maddie Bowman won her third consecutive gold medal in the X Games’ halfpipe Wednesday night.
The South Lake Tahoe veteran, skiing on a recently repaired knee, spun 900s on both the left and right side of the pipe and a switch 720 on her first run for an 85-point score that bested seven of the world’s top female skiers.
“I think we are going to continue to push the sport,” Bowman said.
Ayana Onozuka became the first Japanese woman to find an X Games podium, throwing a right-side 720 to earn 80 points and silver.
