Last week we reported on the first half of the final US qualifiers for Sochi 2014 next month, including a rare and brutal stack from Shaun White in the first slopestyle finals. For some reason that proved to be quite popular, who knew?
Over the weekend even more finals went down; a third slopestyle event and three pipe comps, bringing the grand total for anyone competing in both events to an exhausting and quite possibly dangerous six finals.
Slopestyle first; Jamie Anderson completed a triple victory, or three-peat if you speak the local language, taking the podium top-spot on her first run and attempting a cab 900 on her victory lap. Unfortunately she didn’t quite make it, but if she can hold one down next week at the X-Games then she’ll go into the Olympics on a pretty big high.
After two second places on Thursday, Sage Kotsenburg pulled a win out the bag with a stylish and individual run and all but secured his place for Sochi, even chucking a textbook Eurocarve in at the end. Kyle Mack came second with a bunch of technical spin-wizzles and Ryan Stassel took home bronze with another no-cork run, claiming boring old double corks were ‘easier’. Well, for him.
The big news from the weekend was Danny Davis placing first in the first pipe event with one of the most stylish runs imaginable, throwing a couple of doubles but mainly focusing on smooth single corks with some weird and wonderful tweaks. He grabbed another podium spot in the third final of the weekend with a silver medal, squeezing him into the US pipe team.
Scotty Lago also managed a silver in the second event, but Shaun White grabbed the final two gold medals of the weekend, securing his Olympic place for both pipe and slopestyle. He used his now-standard victory lap to premiere his take on I-Pod‘s ‘YOLO flip,’ in essence a frontside 180 before launching into a backside 1280 double cork. Confused?
In the women’s Kelly Clark continued her pipe domination, throwing out some HUGE 1080s on her first hits and clearing out the rest of the competition. That is until Kaitlyn Farrington beat her by a single point in the final final, taking the last gold of the weekend and sending herself to Sochi.
And that’s it for the US team, the final teams are confirmed and you can see them below. Now they can take a well-deserved break until the Olympics. Oh wait, the X Games start this week. But the Ginger Ninja, Shaun White will be sitting these out so expect to see some unusual pipe podiums.
US Olympic Snowboard Teams
Men’s Slopestyle
Shaun White
Sage Kostenburg
Chas Guldemond
Women’s Slopestyle
Jamie Anderson
Ty Walker
Men’s Halfpipe
Shaun White
Taylor Gold
Greg Bretz
Danny Davis
Women’s Halfpipe
Kelly Clark
Arielle Gold
Kaitlyn Farrington
Hannah Teter