Alex Hall Claims Big Air Title, Jamie Anderson Earns 21st X Games Medal On Day 2
by Karen Price
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Alex Hall competes in the men's freeski slopestyle final at the 2020 Dew Tour at Copper Mountain on Feb. 8, 2020 in Copper Mountain, Colo.
Alex Hall will roll into Beijing for his second Olympic Winter Games with a couple of big wins to give him a boost.
Earlier this month he won the slopestyle skiing event at the world cup in Mammoth Mountain, California, then on Saturday he won the men’s big air skiing contest at the X Games. This weekend’s competition in Aspen, Colorado, is the last major event before the Games open in Beijing on Feb. 4.
Just a step below Hall on the podium was Mac Forehand, who made his X Games debut this weekend and will make his Olympic debut next month. Meanwhile, Jamie Anderson, who won a silver medal in slopestyle snowboarding on Friday, added another silver medal Saturday in big air snowboarding. The medal gives her 21 for her X Games career, which keeps her tied for the most ever with Canadian snowboarder Mark McMorris, who also won his 21st medal Saturday when he won men’s slopestyle snowboarding.
Hall is the only skier to win the X Games in four different disciplines: slopestyle, big air, knuckle huck and real ski. The 23-year-old from Park City, Utah, competed in slopestyle in PyeongChang and will add big air to his slate when that sport makes its Olympic debut in Beijing. On Saturday, his last trick of the night was a 2160 — spinning six full rotations off the jump — and it landed him in first place overall with 94 points to Forehand’s 92.
This is Hall’s fifth gold medal at the X Games.
The top two in the women’s big air snowboarding competition matched that from slopestyle the day before with New Zealand’s Zoi Sadowski-Synnott in first place and Anderson in second to further tease the battle shaping up for Olympic gold in both events.
The 31-year-old Anderson, who’ll make her third trip to the Olympics next month, is the two-time reigning slopestyle gold medalist and won silver when big air debuted in PyeongChang in 2018. She’d be the first snowboarder ever to three-peat in slopestyle, but rising star Sadowski-Synnott, 20, plans on giving her a run as the two have continued to push one another the past few years.
That was the case again on Saturday as Sadowski-Synnott landed a 1260, or three-and-a-half rotations, and Anderson tried one for the first time in competition on the last run of the night. She wasn’t successful landing it but showed how the two continue to push the level of the sport.
Sadowski-Synnott won with a final score of 85 to Anderson’s 82.
The X Games wrap up Sunday with men’s slopestyle skiing, ski knuckle huck and men’s halfpipe skiing.
Karen Price
Karen Price is a reporter from Pittsburgh who has covered Olympic and Paralympic sports for various publications. She is a freelance contributor to TeamUSA.org on behalf of Red Line Editorial, Inc.