X Games 2019 kicked off today with men's slopestyle eliminations, which tend to be pretty much the hardest events to make it through on the comp circuit. Despite a smaller field, X is no exception with only 7 athletes joining the 3 pre-qualified medalists from the previous year (Henrik, Oystein, and Woodsy (because Andri Ragettli got injured in Qualis)). Sidebar, but does it seem strange to anyone else that there are still boxes on an X Games course? The guys used them pretty creatively, which was cool to watch but it just seems odd.
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Run 1:
Proceedings started off with a few bobbles of varying degrees of severity and it was Wille Borm who was first to put down a score in the 80s (despite a slight early off the first rail up top). He stomped two new tricks for him, a dub 16 and a switch dub misty 14. Jesper immediately pushed him down into second with a 6 on and 16 and a 14 of his own.
Jesper Tjader Run 1:
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Fabian Boesch threw a pretty dope 5050 frontflip 5050 180 on the boxes but unfortunately missed his pop on the first jump. Teale Harle is firmly established as one of the best comp skiers to watch these days, and today had a tips under 2 on pretz 2, but didn't keep it all clean run 1.
Alex Hall Run 1:
Alex Hall finally bumped the top score into the 90s with a nuts run including a nugget 270 swap 2 out on the top box feature and his trademark dubs with impossible grabs down the bottom. ABM threw the first triple of the day down the bottom (switch triple 12), twinned with trademark technical rails up top (switch 630 on to the box) and he got 93.66 as a reward. Nick Goepper went ham on the rails with a 2 on cont. 4 into a mirrored 2 on cont. 6 but kept it low key on the jumps and got punished for it with a low 80s score.
ABM Run 1:
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Run 2:
Finn Bilous put a clean run down at the second time of asking with a unique switch lip on - back 2 sniper tap and a 2 on 6 out, into three 12s with clean grabs and scored kind of low (74) for me. Phil Langevin also cleaned up his run compared to run one, but still only scored a 78. Fabian Boesch was the first of the guys who crashed run one to put it down clean with the frontlip transfer 180 out and a switch dub 14, a switch dub misty 12, dub 16 tail on the jumps. He had some small bobbles but his score also seemed low.
Fabian Boesch Run 2:
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Ferdinand Dahl Run 2:
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Ferdinand Dahl put down a dope run to bump Fabian out of the finals, with a 3swap on the dub kink and a switch cork 4 on to the box up top, with back to back switch dub 14 at the bottom (r mute, l safety) to score 89.66. Gus had a huge 450 disaster in his run and was the only guy in the whole field to hit the QP takeoff but unfortunately, it killed his speed. Evan McEachran made through at the death, despite coming off the first rail pretty early with an otherwise dope run.
Evan McEachran Run 2:
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Results (Top 7 join Henrik, Oystein and Woodsy in finals):
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