The first time I watched Mageau’s edit, I hadn’t seen any of the others yet. I saw his opening shot and was amazed and thought competition over. And i’ve seen a lot of people talking about that shot, so I want to address it -
After watching it more and more, I started to notice how small the spot was. Then I saw this post, and was even less impressed by the whole thing (first couple of seconds) -
https://www.instagram.com/p/BuJuwcrhsPC/?utm_source=ig_share_sheet&igshid=nvajtmbd0l77
That spot is tiny and low risk. Creative and dope take on the spot, the trick was nice. But that pole is like 4 feet off the ground, with some grass on the side of it... nevermind the rail is like 4 feet off the ground and is super short. It’s a spot that like every pro skier out there wouldn’t have a problem stepping to, its tiny.
Compare that spot to Phil’s opening shot - he drops into a very steep and probably a super rusted/sketchy rail, is idk 60 ft? Off the ground when he first gets on the rail, slides it and then comes off into a massive wall tranny that is probably 20 ft off the ground, hops off the rail at the perfect time and redirects the angle of his body so that he can get parrel with the tyranny (overlooked how gnarly this is), and then drags his noses down the tranny before stomping switch at a high speed/quick drop to basically flat. Of course he did it extremely smooth and made it look easy, but think about if he fucks up at any point of it. If he slides off the rail early he is falling like 50-60 feet to the ground, if he doesn’t change the angle of his body perfectly and at the right time he either gets shot into the wall or gets shot out and misses his tranny/landing, both causing him to fall like 20 feet to the ground. But nah he laced that shit perfect, so clean you don’t even really notice how gnarly/high risk the spot is. It was a spot that Stept would have hit, and nothing in Mageau’s video can really compare to that level of risk.
With Mageau’s spot, if he messes up he falls a few feet into grass or onto a concrete step... that’s not big enough for X-Games in my opinion. I like old Level 1 movies and a Stept and am not a big new wave fan, so maybe that’s why - But when comparing those two shots, anyone that doesn’t recognize how insane Phil’s spot was, or that thinks Mageau’s entire shot was in anyway better skiing than Phil’s is straight buggin.
Mageau’s trick was cool, but I know he has done shit like that so many times, so I doubt hopping 2 feet into the air at a slow speed and balancing on a little piece of medal while his natural momentum brings him around, then he lift up hit foot and falls into the small rail... I doubt it’s thats hard for him to get on such a low risk feature. It’s basically a small 360 surface swap stall thing into a straight slide on a small rail... it isn’t as ill as a lot of other shots in this competition.
^ In my opinion, that is basically an overall summary of why Mageau’s edit lost out when compared to some of the other ones.
**This post was edited on Mar 2nd 2019 at 5:44:02pm
**This post was edited on Mar 2nd 2019 at 6:10:11pm