The men's freestyle skiing slopestyle event at the Beijing Olympics showcased was once again dominated by Team USA, taking both gold and silver medals.
Alex Hall won gold after his impressive first run down the course, which netted him a score of 90.01 — a score that would not be topped for the rest of the competition. The win gives Hall his first career Olympic hardware.
Hall pulled off an incredible play on the last jump, pulling back a right double cork 1080 into a 900 – the equivalent of a pretzel in the air. It's not like he rested on his laurels after that run, however, as his second run earned a score of 86.38, which would have been better than all but one rider.
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That one rider was teammate Nick Goepper, whose second run would ultimately earn him a silver medal, the second one of his career. He won bronze in the inaugural Olympic slopestyle competition at the 2014 Sochi Games before winning silver at the 2018 PyeongChang Games.
After posting just a 45.75 on his opening run, Goepper's second got him a score of 86.48, which put him in second, a position he held through the final runs.
Team USA also had another representative in the event. Colby Stevenson put up his best score on his first run with a 77.41, but he could not improve on that number in his final two attempts and finished seventhe. He had a chance to become the first U.S. athlete to win multiple individual medals at these Olympics after taking home silver in big air.
The U.S. has dominated the men’s slopestyle event since it was introduced in 2014. It swept the podium in 2014 before Goepper was the lone Team USA competitor to medal in 2018. The U.S. now has six medals in the event, five more than any other country.
Sweden's Jesper Tjader finished with the bronze after posting a score of 85.35 on his first run. Only one other rider's score was able to eclipse the 80-point mark, Switzerland Andri Ragettli, whose second run scored an 83.50.
The top two finishers from this year’s qualifying could not grab medal positions in their final runs. Ragettli led qualifying with an 85.08 score before maxing out in his second run on Tuesday and landing in fourth place. Norway’s Birk Ruud went from second in qualifying to fifth in the final with his third-run score of 79.33.
