Big Air, Women

The 2018 Olympic Winter Games women’s big air event was making its Games début in PyeongChang and was one of the deepest competitions the sport had ever had. Anna Gasser of Austria was the favourite for gold with her consistent and multiple variations of the double cork 1080, which was considered the top trick in women’s big air.

Among the athletes who could mount a challenge to Gasser were the two American riders. If Jamie Anderson, the two-time Olympic gold medalist in snowboard slopestyle won the big air title she would become the first woman to earn three gold medals in snowboarding. Julia Marino was one of the most progressive women in the sport over the last few seasons and one of the athletes who helped make doubles a competition standard in this event. Other riders to watch were Canada’s Laurie Blouin who had already won the PyeongChang slopestyle silver medal and 2017 World slopestyle title, and two talented 16-year-olds, New Zealand’s Zoi Sadowski-Synnott and Japan’s Reira Iwabuchi.

The women’s Olympic snowboard big air final was brought forward one day due to predicted high winds on the scheduled day. The 12 riders who reached the final would each have three attempts at a trick, with their overall point total based off their two best scores (but those scores had to come from two different tricks). Nine of the 12 snowboarders who qualified for the final posted at least a score of 85.25 and six scored 90.00 or higher.

Landing a cab double cork 1080 on her final drop, Gasser secured gold with a 96.00 and the highest combined two out of three runs (185.00) edging out the American Anderson over seven full points. Anderson started out with a deep frontside 1080 on her first run and a cab double cork 900 to cap off a silver medal performance with a combined score of 177.25.

Sadowski-Synnott had a huge showing and walked away with a bronze medal after landing a double Wildcat and backing it up with a solid jump for a combined score of 157.50. Her medal was the first New Zealand Olympic Winter medal in over 25 years. Just missing the podium was the young Japanese phenom Iwabuchi after failing to land clean on two out of three runs. Marino and her American teammate Jessika Jenson failed to make the podium with two out of three runs resulting in falls.