Today history was made, after years of Wimbledon style whinging the first EVER British Olympic medal on snow came from a snowboarder! Not a downhill skier in sight, stick that in your (half)pipe and smoke it Ski Sunday! Jenny Jones came away with a bronze and another win for the style camp, other rider’s big-but-sketchy spins losing out to Jones’ experience and pure steeze.
Jamie Anderson got the win and the gold with an astonishing run: a clean rail section into a cab 7 nose grab, corked switch backside 5 and a front 7. Women’s snowboarding went up a notch today and Team ‘Muurica grabbed gold in both the men’s and women’s slopestyle.
Finnish rider Enni Rukajarvi brought back a silver medal for the Moomins, also putting down two clean sevens in her run. She was stoked!
But again, the big news for all of us is Jenny Jones‘s bronze, a huge achievement for UK snowboarding; as the mainstream media keeps reminding us we have no real snow on our shores. This victory will hopefully put British snowsport’s funding in good stead for the next four years at least!
Her run included some nice technical rail work – one the few women to go switch on – into a jump run consisting of a cab 540, backside 360 and a frontside 720, all stomped! Tristan Kennedy, our man on the ground, tried to grab a quote from her but all she could manage was, “Oh my God oh my God oh my God thisisamazing!”
Her score of 87.25 hammered home how the Olympic judges have been favouring style over and above everything else; Swiss Sina Candrian managed to stick the first ever front 1080 in a women’s contest after an almost identical top section, but a scrappy landing with a hand down put her just .25 behind Jenny and a medal.
Many of the bigger names other than favourite Jamie Anderson stumbled in the finals, the judges again heavily penalising anything other than a perfect landing. Torah Bright will now have to focus on the other two events she’s entered in in these games. However, at no point did it look like she wasn’t having just the best time.
The fun was infectious, as Ed Leigh put it, ‘it’s a sport that starts with fun which just continues to grow throughout a whole career.’ Anna Gasser even managed to hold a smile after looking like her coach had pushed her down the start ramp to early, the ice preventing her from getting back up to the top without going into Chuckle Brother mode.
She had a great shout of the top three, her huge underflips sending her to the bottom of the first jump, but she couldn’t put down anything on the last.
Spencer O’Brien and Silje Nordenhal, both touted as potential medalists coming into Sochi were nowhere to be seen at the end of the day, both failing to get a full run in and ending up at the bottom of the table.
The biggest cheers of the day went up for Šárka Pančochová, able to make it to the bottom after catching a vicious edge, apparently knocking herself out and even cracking her helmet in half! Shark Bite looks like she’s invincible!
And then slopestyle was over at the Olympics, but not for the BBC. Coverage highlights for us would have to be Tim Warwood declaring Jenny has ‘a face that could make bread rise,’ and Ed Leigh bursting into tears almost as soon as the contest was over. Aimee Fuller also made a commentary appearance throughout the finals; future career for her at the Beeb?
After Jamie Nicholls‘ and Billy Morgan‘s successes yesterday, once again snowboarding looks like it has ‘captured the hearts of the nation,’ but we’ll always know it’s just a bit daft really, just a bunch of people sliding sideways on snow. Well done Jenny!
Sochi 2014 Women’s Slopestyle Finals Results
1 |
95.25 |
|
2 |
92.50 |
|
3 |
87.25 |
|
4 |
87.00 |
|
5 |
86.25 |
|
6 |
75.00 |
|
7 |
66.25 |
|
8 |
58.50 |
|
9 |
54.50 |
|
10 |
51.75 |
|
11 |
49.50 |
|
12 |
35.00 |