Freestyle skiing-Americans Hall and Goepper rule slopestyle to take gold
and silver
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[February 16, 2022] By
Mari Saito and Winni Zhou
ZHANGJIAKOU, China (Reuters) -American freestyle skiers Alex Hall
and Nicholas Goepper dominated the slopestyle final to win gold and
silver at the Beijing Games, throwing down inspired runs that stood
out from the field.
Hall, who won the slopestyle contest at the Mammoth Mountain Grand
Prix in January, led the pack from the start, earning a monster
90.01 score in his first run with a brand new trick that saw him
stop a 1080 mid-air and rewind the last rotation by half a turn
before planting the landing.
Afterwards, Hall leaned over the barrier at the finish, looking both
exhausted and relieved by his high score.
"That last jump was definitely maybe my hardest trick," the
23-year-old said, adding that he was "stoked" for landing it.
"Lot of us (in the sport) are what we call spin to win and are
spinning as much as we can, so to take a new approach and do a trick
that has almost no rotation that's still really hard was really
sweet," he told reporters after the final with the American flag
draped around his shoulders.
![](http://archives.lincolndailynews.com/2022/Feb/16/images/ads/current/charrons_bch_2022.png)
Fellow American Goepper, who won silver in the same event at the
Pyeongchang Games in 2018 and bronze at Sochi in 2014, took silver
after losing momentum in his third and final run and failing to best
Hall.
But Goepper, whose best run scored 86.48, said he was happy to get
on the podium with a run that felt unique to his skiing style.
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![](../images/021622pics/sports15.jpg)
Alexander Hall and Nicholas Goepper of the United States react after
winning gold and silver respectively. REUTERS/Mike Blake
![](../images/ads/current/graue_lda_2021.gif)
The 27-year-old went his own way throughout the
final, grinding on what he laughingly called the "shred shed" - a
snowy replica of an ancient watch tower on the Great Wall-inspired
course - and banking right on the last jump to hit a side take-off
unlike any of his rivals.
"This felt good to do it how we wanted to," Goepper said, commending
teammate Hall for his creative take on the course.
Sweden's Jesper Tjader, who took the bronze with his top score of
85.35, said he had been planning on landing a switch triple cork in
the course for eight years and was "stoked" to successfully nail it
in his first and best run on Wednesday.
"A lot of pieces came together today. It just worked out," the Swede
said.
Birk Ruud of Norway, who won a Big Air gold last week and had aimed
to medal at all three of his events including the slopestyle, missed
his landings and failed to podium.
Skiers competed under blue skies at the Genting Snow Park in
Zhangjiakou, where air temperatures dropped to -24.3 degrees Celsius
(-11.74°F) ahead of the final.
(Reporting by Mari Saito and Winni Zhou; Editing by Himani Sarkar
and Richard Pullin)
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