In her second appearance at the X Games, Elizabeth Hosking was aiming big, at least more than her seventh place finish on Saturday in the halfpipe in Aspen, Colorado. At the end of the line, her disappointment was felt, but the Quebecer still found a way to draw something positive from her experience.
“Of course this is not the result I expected when I arrived here,” she said a few hours after a performance tinged with ups, but also downs.
While she was able to get off to a good start on each of her four runs in the halfpipe, the snowboarder from Longueuil struggled to maintain the pace throughout her runs. A lack of amplitude caused in part by the accumulation of snow in the structure hurt Hosking who was never able to fight for the title.
“It’s still disappointing not to be able to perform the maneuvers that I’m usually able to do,” she said. The weather was tough today. There was a lot of snow, so I had a lot of trouble maintaining a good height from A to Z. It was just frustrating not being able to get the necessary amplitude. »
Hosking had also made adjustments to his routine for the occasion, going for a frontside 1080 from the start rather than in the middle of his descent. “It was all new for me and the fact of succeeding like that and adapting so quickly, it makes me proud,” she said. That means I’m able to master it well enough to do it on command. »
A few others of the eight competitors also performed this maneuver during the event, to the delight of the crowd. This is the case of the South Korean prodigy Gaon Choi, who won in front of the best snowboarders in the world.
At just 14 years old, the youngest participant in this edition of the X Games and reigning world champion among the juniors surpassed in order the American Maddie Mastro, vice-world champion of the event, and the Chinese Xuetong Cai, twice world gold medalist.
“My result is disappointing, but it’s still been a great week. I still had the chance to rub shoulders with the crème de la crème of my sport and I have to learn from all that. We are going to do a reset and we’ll be ready for the next competition,” concluded Hosking, who will be at the World Cup in Mammoth Mountain, California, next week.
She will be looking for the second medal of her career on the circuit after the silver obtained at Copper Mountain, last December.
Laurie Blouin dazzles with a big leap
A few hours after Elizabeth Hosking’s performance, it was Laurie Blouin’s turn to take the plunge (Big Air). Provisionally second with 34 points after his first maneuver, the athlete from Stoneham-et-Tewkesbury then wanted to put pressure on his opponents by performing a triple under flip.
Falling on her next three runs, Blouin lifted the crowd on her very last attempt, where she finally landed perfectly.
His 48 points collected for this jump, the highest mark obtained in this session, allowed him to bring his total to 82 to climb on the third step of the podium. Japan’s Reira Iwabuchi (87 points) won the gold medal, while New Zealand’s Zoi Sadowski-Synnott (86 points) finished second.
Blouin, who had placed fifth in the acrobatic descent (slopestyle) the day before, thus climbed on the podium of the X Games for the sixth time in her career, a third in the big jump.
Proofs will be presented on Sunday, at the conclusion of the event. Called in as reinforcements, Olivia Asselin will be in the acrobatic descent, while her teammate Edouard Therriault should be among the eight skiers to take part in the big jump at the end of the day.