It wasn't quite the Cinderella story that we saw in the halfpipe, but the outcome of today's contest was close. TJ Schiller came to the Winter X Games Slopestyle having competed in only one slopestyle since undergoing an ACL repair last February. And he came as an alternate, without even a certain spot in the contest. During training, you could hear whispers about how well he was skiing and that he ought to have a spot. Though he was having fun and turning heads, TJ was discouraged by his alternate status. He could even be overheard threatening that, if he couldn't get into the contest, it would be the last contest he'd ever try to do. Just yesterday, TJ got in. And today, old TJ was back, well not even old TJ, but some sort of new TJ that's somehow even better than the old TJ when that TJ was already so [heckin] good. And he laid it down, and that was really sick, and nobody could top him.
Now that I've talked about TJ's compelling victory, and (I think) sufficiently established that I'm not about to diminish his achievement, let's talk about the slopestyle course. The Winter X Slopestyle course is tight. The lack of setup time between jumps is the course's main challenge, and it has always been the thing that separated the men in the contest from the boys. But while that attribute of the course presented a significant challenge, it never diminished the level of the riding in the contest.
Enter the Crossover Canyon. No longer content to have the second-to-last landing abutting the final takeoff, somebody at the X Games decided this year to remove the center of the landing. Consequently, competitors not only had no setup time for the biggest jump in the course, but now also had to jam a hard left- or right-hand turn in order to use the big takeoff. This new course layout made it nearly impossible to use the main takeoff of the final jump in anything but the most perfect conditions. And with conditions far from perfect, several skiers used the small takeoffs in the Men's Ski Slope final. Even fewer competitors could "go big" on the Money Booter in the Snow Slope Final. We also watched Sarah Burke and Peter Olenick get crushed on the Money Booter for being unwilling to accept that a jump in the course could in fact be impossible to clear even after stomping the trick above it.
During the Final, laudatory commentary for technical, stylish runs repeatedly bore the caveat, "but he's going to have to go over Crossover Canyon if he hopes to improve his score." The decision to put a channel gap where before a regular tabletop had been a challenge moved the focus of the contest off of the tricks and style, and put it on the ability to take the most eXtreme line on a certain eXtreme feature. Snowboarding had the same problem, where the most notable part of Shaun White's masterful run was that he was the "only rider to gap the channel jump." And that took the level down. Three slopestyle athletes showcased a righteous variety of big spins and doubles on the same kicker that more or less got skipped, sevened, or nined in the slopestyle the next day.
TJ took down a well deserved win today. And in a course that enabled athletes to do their very best tricks, he probably would have still won — it just would have been more fun to watch.
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John Symms
My friend is a pro. In fact, many of my friends are pros. How else do you think I got this job?
