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How good is the U.S. Olympic team heading to Sochi for the slopestyle debut? Consider the athletes who didn’t make the cut.
Some of the most talented snowboarders and freeskiers in the world got left off the U.S. Olympic slopestyle squad. That list includes freeskiing legends Tom Wallisch and Sammy Carlson and snowboarding superstars Scotty Lago, Gretchen Bleiler and Elena Hight, to name just a few.
Because of the explosion of the sport of slopestyle, the rise of freestyle terrain parks in the U.S. and the dominance of American freestylers in international competition, the U.S. had to narrow its first-ever Olympic slopestyle squad from dozens of legit medal contenders to eight freeskiers and eight snowboarders, half women and half men. After a series of qualifying events, the final U.S. Olympic teams have been selected. They are:
Men Skiing Slopestyle
- Bobby Brown
- Nick Goepper
- Gus Kenworthy
- Joss Christensen
Women Skiing Slopestyle
- Keri Herman
- Devin Logan
- Julia Krass
- Maggie Voisin
Men Snowboarding Slopestyle
- Chas Guldemond
- Sage Kosenberg
- Shaun White
- Ryan Stassel
Women Snowboarding Slopestyle
- Jamie Anderson
- Ty Walker
- Jessika Jenson
- Karly Shorr
All of those squads have major potential, but the men’s freeskiers are expected to be particularly dominant. Imagine if the U.S. Dream Team hoopers had been forced to cut two thirds of their talent and go with just their top four: Magic, Bird, Clyde the Glide Drexler and Michael Jordan. That’s how good these guys are. Any one of them could win gold.
Most if not all of these athletes have spent time training on Mount Hood because of the mountain’s super-long shred season. Freeskiing phenom Nick Goepper, the frontrunner to win gold in Sochi, moved from Indiana to Oregon to train on Mount Hood and hone his skills at the Windells Academy.
Skiers and snowboarders will shred a slopestyle course at the Rosa Khutor Extreme Park in Russia that is huge and potentially dangerous, with enormous jumps and imposing jibs. Norwegian snowboarding medal favorite Torstein Horgmo broke his collarbone training on the course this week, prompting top athletes to demand that the takeoffs and landings be altered for safety.
Sage Kotsenburg joked that the course is “sicker than the flu” in one Tweet and in another more serious post wrote: “RELAX, course is good here. Jumps are big, need a slight adjustment on the pop to match up with the landings, rails are fun just a little icy.”
Swedish freeskiing star and Big Air winner at the 2014 X Games Henrik Harlaut wrote in his blog, “The whole course was really sick, huge jumps and some nice rails. Definitely got the mind going for what run i wanna work towards so now i just gotta play it smart and think before i make my move like in a game of chess.”
Here is a detailed diagram of the course if you would like to imagine giving it a try. Slopestyle is a judged event combining rails, boxes, jibs and jumps, and the features at the Olympic slopestyle are intimidating to say the least.
Expect super-smooth jibs and insane huge-air tricks, including triple corks that were unthinkable five years ago and now are becoming increasingly common.
Here’s a video of Gus Kenworthy landing the first triple cork in X Games Slopestyle history.
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And here is Max Parrott’s gold-medal snowboarding run at the X Games in 2014.
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The snowboarding slopestyle qualifiers in Sochi will be Thursday, Feb. 6, televised in prime time, 8 pm Pacific Time on NBC. Here is the rest of the TV schedule for slopestyle events in Sochi:
8 pm Saturday on NBC, men’s snowboarding final
7 pm Sunday on NBC, women’s snowboarding final
3 pm Tuesday on NBC, women’s skiing qualies
8 pm Tuesday on NBC, women’s skiing final
8 pm Thursday on NBC, men’s skiing final
Last modified: February 3, 2014
