As the only Russian to qualify for slopestyle (and even then on the ‘home rider’ rule, which allows the host nation an Olympic place even if their guy hasn’t done quite enough) Alexey Sobolev was always going to be expected to do something special. And while he didn’t have the tricks to trouble those on the podium, he did have the personality to put on an incredible show. As Billy Morgan put it, “Alexey’s a lad!”

From the start, he seemed to refuse to take it seriously, throwing crowd-pleasing backflips off the canon rail and lying down in a porn star pose while receiving his score. And then there was the fact that some people thought his Stepchild board graphic – showing a knife-wielding woman in a balaclava – was a protest about Pussy Riot, something he refused to deny, simply saying “anything is possible.”

Открытка @gruppa_voina, @tolokno, @MashaAlekhina, @GogolsWives, @ofitserovajj pic.twitter.com/5PuqHHTDi0

— Смерть неизбѣжна. (@death_is_invtbl) February 6, 2014

But the thing which made us love him the most? The fact that he wrote his phone number on his helmet and flashed it to the world at every opportunity. Apparently he was made to cover it up with black tape for his second run but by that time enough women had texted him pictures of themselves for it to cause his iPhone to meltdown…

Seriously, if that’s not lad then I don’t know what is.