MAHONEboneThis is by far the hardest year to judge far and away. It's said every year, but truly this is next level type of street skiing.
For me it has to go as follows:
1) LJ. the first trick should be a winner in and of itself. Attempting that must have been literal death. Every shot was a banger. Mix in creative features with LJ tech and that's a gold medal video no question
2) Henrik. Henrik was a fantastic combination of smooth and tech, all while going large shot by shot. Maybe only 1, 2 at the max throwaway shots in retrospect but it was next level some of the shots he produced.
3/4) Has to be a toss up between Tom, and Magnus. Magnus flowed and put in a unique style that only a handful of skiers could reproduce, Henrik included. Only thing that limited him was not going as large as Henrik CONSISTENTLY. Tom was going big throughout most of the shots but I can't put my finger on it. Maybe not as crazy tech as Henrik or LJ? If he threw in a couple of harder tricks while hitting those same features he would have taken out Henrik IMO and been competing for 1st.
5) Will is an animal. 30 years old and still charging like this is medal worthy itself. Same with Tom. In comparison, I just thought Will's tech and creativeness weren't as big as Henrik's or certainly LJ's. Magnus was more unique with the style aspect, and recreating the tricks he does is so damn hard, and Tom just went larger with higher risk features. All came down to who was going the biggest this year. I also enjoyed the vibe of Will's video the best.
6) Khai. Insane that I'm ranking Khai here, especially in his field of expertise in skiing. If Khai took more of the Cam Riley / Clayton Vila approach and put in more shots like his enders while going even more tech he would have placed for sure.
I can't fathom how the judges put medals on these this year. Must have been the hardest thing to judge all year. Props to everyone for putting out unreal segments.
I think this is the closest to what I saw as well. Although after watching them a couple more times I think I'm going with
1. LJ (next level)
2. Henrik (so big, styley and technical all in one)
3. Will (the tech in this one was next level, didn't quite go as big as the first two though)
4. Tom (stuff was huge and so much style, but maybe not quite the same level of mind blowing stuff we expect from Tom, maybe hindered by our expectations of the best skier in the world)
5. Magnus (really cool edit that was incredible and next level, I think just the size of the hits and not going quite as huge as some of the other entries moved him down for me personally)
6. Khai (mind-blowingly good street edit, just goes to show how crazy this competition was, just not quite enough to really stick out and separate himself from everyone else)
Ending it off by saying all 6 of these were absolutely next level edits and not one single guy is really last or should be considered that because they were all sooooo goood.
