Slopestyle Eliminations and finals
Friday, January 27, 2012 at 12:34PM Yesterday had to be one of the longest day's of competition I have ever had. Training for slopestyle started at 9 and we didn't finish finals until about 9 or 10 last night.
Slopestyle eliminations was one of the craziest event's I have ever had the privilege of competing in. Every rider that qualified had at least 3 doubles and majority had doubles spinning both left and right. The field was stacked and I spent the majority of eliminations worried as I was in and out of the bubble spot up until my last run, which ended up putting me in 5th.
Rightside dub 12
Training for finals definitely did not go my way. I didn't land any of my tricks, had to swap to another pair of ski's that I hadn't skied rails on yet and I gave my knee a shock by going to the bottom of the landing on the first jump. Definitely not how I wanted to go into slope finals for Xgames, but you get what your given and have to deal with what ever is thrown at you.
Getting worked on between eliminations and finals
First run in finals felt pretty good for me except for the fact I wasn't going all that big on the jumps, I think that was because I was subconsciously nursing my knee and didn't want to hurt it. After I landed that run, I realised if I wanted to do better I had to go bigger.
PK is a beast
Testing the last jump. We had a lot of fresh snow during the event
Second run was far better than my first. I went bigger on the jumps and got the rails pretty well. Only trick I feel I needed to clean up was the 450 on the top rail as I thought it wasn't as clean as I could have done it.
Third run I was super nervous and knew I needed a perfect run to do well. I got my top rails the best I had got them since being here at X, but then everything fell apart on the first jump. I did my rightside double underflip and dropped my pole. I know a lot of people are questioning why I didn't just finish my run with 1 pole. The answer is, even though I landed, the judges would have seen it as a deduction and I highly doubt that with that bobble, it would beat my previous run score.
I have mixed emotions today. I am frustrated with myself that I would drop my pole in a situation like that, but at the same time I'm stoked I ended up in the top 5 at such a high level of competition and after not even knowing if I would be ready to compete for Xgames with my knee surgery.
I have a lot of things I want, and need to learn, but I am being held back by my knee and having to do tricks I know I can land so that my knee can hold out throughout the season.
Congrats to everyone in the Xgames this year. It was an absurd level of skiing and I think everyone deserves props for just being in such a crazy event like this. Extra pros goes to Tom, Nick and Andreas for coming out on top. You guys Killed it.
Russ
