Many competitions have faced cancellation in this tumultuous year, but X Games returned to our screens today despite the travel restrictions and difficulties presented by the pandemic. It's taken a lot of effort on the part of the organizers and athletes to get us here (as well as copious testing) so let's take a moment to be grateful that we get to enjoy the show at all!
Things kicked off with the women taking to the big air jump in challenging, scary looking light. A stacked field took to the skies of Aspen as the jam session format made a return with the two best scores counting. Two different jumps made up the final score but there were no other requirements, which meant it was a full-on send fest which is what you want to see in big air in our opinion.
You could tell the light was making things difficult with some surprise overshoots, undershoots, and under rotations as the riders found it hard to distinguish air from ground. Megan Oldham took a heavy knuckle but seemed ok. Sarah Hoefflin took a heavy knuckle hit on a switch dub 10 too. Mathilde sent a switch dub 14 and crashed hard too, even requiring a callout for the medical crew. That meant a delay in proceedings, but somehow she got up, walked it off, kept on skiing, stomped the 14, and took the win by a big margin. Warrior.
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Best tricks:
Caroline Claire - Switch dub 9 high safety, switch dub 10 safety
Isabel Atkin - Switch right 9, switch right 10
Eileen Gu - Left dub 10 safety, right 9
Sarah Hoefflin - Switch right 10 mute (double wobble), switch left 7 safety
Megan Oldham - Switch 10 mute, left dub 12 safety
Mathilde Gremaud - Switch dub 10 blunt (capped, super slow, definitely the trick of the day), switch dub 14 safety
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1st place - Mathilde Gremaud
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2nd place - Megan Oldham
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3rd place - Eileen Gu
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