Slopestyle is a sprawling competition that asks freestyle skiers to blend all of their skills and prove themselves on both massive jumps and rail features. The course in Aspen this year is electric, spanning over 1,700 feet long with six unique features. The top half of the course consists of three rail-based features, and the bottom half includes three large jumps. 10 athletes lay down two runs each, with the best run being counted. The five best riders move on to finals, where they have two more runs to put down their finest tricks.
Slopestyle skiers are judged on progression, execution, difficulty, variety and amplitude.
The wonderful thing about X Games Aspen is that you never know what you’re going to get. We saw a few examples of this in last night’s Knuckle Huck, as Alex Hall and Rell Harwood earned gold with a few unsuspecting maneuvers under the lights. We’d be remiss without mentioning Juho Saastamoinen’s cocktail of a trick, blending a backslide, screamin’ seamen and bio flip into one.
Men’s Slopestyle delivered more surprises. Young Luca Harrington was coasting into Aspen as an alternate for Slopestyle just yesterday. With one call, the talented Kiwi was summoned to compete in the big event. Laying down a BEAUTIFUL line, he became only the second X Games rookie to ever win gold. The other person to do it? Colby Stevenson. Pretty good company to be in, if you ask us.
Harrington landed a triple 19 blunt yesterday during practice on the Big Air jump, and while he didn’t break that out in Slopestyle today, we should have seen it as an omen for what was to come.
It was the Swiss stud Andri Ragettli grabbing silver. Ragettli has become well known around the internet and freeski scene for his bewildering and creative training videos, and if we’ve learned anything, it’s that working on your balance in unorthodox ways seems to go miles for your skiing. Ragettli was dialed in the first half of the course, landing switch out of every rail feature.
Mac Forehand earned the bronze medal with a strong performance, coming in just two points behind Ragettli, and one point ahead of fourth-place finisher Konnor Ralph. Forehand closed out his run by stomping a switch triple 1620, taking it deep down the landing. He was the first rider in the finals to put together a completed run in the jump line.
While Alex Hall was attempting to be the first rider in history to win four gold medals in one X Games, today’s seventh place finish puts him out of contention. But A Hall is never one to pat his stats just for the hell of it. We’re sure he’ll keep skiing in his own style, and odds are he’ll bring home another medal in Street Style or Big Air.