YUNDING SNOW PARK, China (December 4th and 5th) — Like most snowboarders, the opinions I have regarding snowboarding are not opinions, but rather they’re indisputable facts, unmovable objects that consistently meet the very stoppable forces of dissenting voices. I know who my favorite snowboarders are, and I cannot be persuaded otherwise. I know which videos I like, and those who disagree are not only wrong but also fundamentally lacking in taste. I know that snowboarding, at least in the context we’re speaking about right now, is a sport—I’ve been to three press conferences in five days, of course this is a sport. And I know that, when speaking about contests, there is really only one that demands a viewer's attention: Halfpipe.
Halfpipe’s evolution is undoubtedly the most tasteful in competitive snowboarding. Slopestyle has evolved well, but too often, the athletes simply use the rails as a means to transport them to the jumps, rather than giving them the respect they deserve. Big air is, at times, too much—the flips, the spins, it’s too much. And, to put it bluntly, streetstyle and knuckle huck are corny. So, what are we left with? We’re left with something that has remained the same long enough for the riders to not only perfect it, but become bored with it, bored to a point where they start to play, not with the medium but rather with the tricks. This has led us into the golden age of halfpipe riding, with tricks like alley-oop double mctwists and switch alley-oop double michael chucks. The riders are getting creative precisely because halfpipe, on its own, has not evolved. It’s still the same two walls that have been there the whole time. In terms of contest riding, halfpipe is the favorite child. I mean, why else would I be in China?
It was qualifying day, and the wind blew wisps of snow that danced between the walls of the pipe as if they were riders themselves. The jumbotron at the bottom of the pipe described how everything would work. There were four heats of four or five riders, for the women and men, respectively. The winner from each heat moved on to finals day, while the bottom one or two—again, for women and men, respectively, depending on heat size—got eliminated. The second and third placed finishers from each heat were placed in a last chance qualifier, where the top four finishers there moved on to finals day. And look, I know, it sounds complex. But it all essentially boils down to a simple rule that, if followed, can be the key to success: If you do well, then you’ll advance. And, when the sun set and the pipe emptied out for the day, eight men and eight women did well enough to move on.
Day two, finals day as it was being called—despite the fact that there were still a quarter and semi finals to get through—saw a break from the wind. In fact, the weather was gorgeous, warm enough for the crowd to enjoy themselves but not too warm so as the pipe would deteriorate. It was perfect. The second day saw another Snow League exclusive format, one I was skeptical about. The eight riders who had moved on from day one were ranked and then placed in brackets, with the first seed going up against the eight, the second going against the seventh, and so on down the line. Quarterfinals would be four one-on-one matchups. Semifinals would be two one-on-one matchups, with the losers there battling for third while the winners battled for first and second. Each matchup in this format is best two out of three, with riders having to win on a run to run basis to move out of their bracket. Again, I know. I apologize for the minutiae. I too was confused, weary even. I thought, foolishly at the time, that this new format could defeat the potential magic moment, the, it only takes one, kind of thing, where a rider can squeak through qualifying, fall their first two runs of finals, and then bring it home with something special on the last run when it really counts. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. Right?
What I didn’t understand was that moments like that, getting it when it really counts, they still exist in this new format. In fact, they exist far more frequently. I became a convert in real time, on the first matchup of the day, the women’s quarterfinal bout between Patti Zhou and Gaon Choi.
The ladies were boosting, tricking, going tit for tat. It was a call and response, more like a boxing match or a game of chess than a snowboard contest. Patti landed the first blow, taking the victory in run number one. Gaon clapped back and took the win in run two, pushing the match to a third run. As a spectator, I understood the appeal. I got it, there was an excitement there, because now strategy was involved. If your competitor falls, do you still give the run everything you have? Or, is it better to pump the brakes and use only what you need to advance? You don’t want to show your cards too early, but then again, you still have to show them at some point. It’s a game of timing now, and seeing the competitors dissect the situation in real time was just as exciting as watching them ride. Well, it was for a moment, but then Patti dropped on run three and tossed up a huge front double 10, and I remembered that strategy is only a part of it.
The day progressed, and the weeding out of competitors continued. Quarterfinals gave way to semis. The men and women kept going to battle. Matchups were being drawn out to three runs, and the drama unfolded as if the halfpipe were a stage—I suppose in many ways it was.
Years ago, the first hit in the halfpipe was reserved for a method—a switch method if you were feeling cheeky, or perhaps a large mctwist with a Japan grab. Now though, the first hit is offering more: Switch back 12’s, cab triples. Mitsuki Ono started her run with a perfect front 9. I stood at the bottom of the halfpipe, slack-jawed, gawking in amazement at how far the sport had come in regards to not just tricks, but trick placement inside a run. We’re at a point now where we’re seeing triples mid-run, casually tossed in there not as a spectacle, not as something you do once just to say you can, but instead as a vehicle to drive the run forward, a single piece to a much larger puzzle. It’s truly amazing, and all I could wonder was how did we get here? I felt like a parent looking at their grown child and asking themselves: When did this happen?
The final matchups were set, and Patti Zhou, at just fourteen years old and at her home mountain, stood out as both a rider and a disrupter, the lone warrior to prevent an entire Japanese podium sweep. It was her versus Mitsuki Ono on the women’s side, and Yuto Totsuka versus Ayumu Hirano on the men's.
Ayumu Hirano could very well be the elephant in the room here, the thing I’ve been dancing around. At the outset, I’ll just say I love Ayumu. I don’t think there’s another rider out there who goes as big or looks as good. What he does is truly wonderful, and, after making it all the way to finals without falling once, I have the deepest sympathies for any rider unlucky enough to face him in a matchup. So, after Ayumu took the victory in his first run of the finals matchup, I had assumed he’d close it out in two; it’s what he had done during every other matchup that day. But, on his second run in the finals, he G’d out. He went up the wall on his second hit for a cab double, and gravity took him, his body opened up, and he flew, for a moment, as if he were a ragdoll. Gasps shot through the crowd as he flipped not once, but twice, still committing to the double. And, astonishingly, he put it to his feet. He landed rode into the next wall, and did the exact same thing only frontside instead of cab. He flipped through the air, and the crowd gasped again. Annie Fast from Snow League instinctively grabbed my shoulder with what can only be described as a death grip. A collective heart attack ran through the fans, and only when Ayumu finally fell into the wall, unhurt but without putting it to his feet, did we breathe a sigh of relief.
The thing about Ayumu is, he doesn’t fall. So, Yuto seized the rare opportunity as best he could. He put down a run that he knew he could land to tie up the match. He had pushed finals to a third run.
Yuto dropped first on run three and was putting down a run for the ages; it was nearly perfect. On the last hit though, he couldn’t hold on. He had given Ayumu an opening, one he capitalized on as he put yet another run down on his feet to claim a Snow League victory and a piece of the massive $50,000 prize money—with equal payouts to men and women of course.
The matchup between Mistuki and Patti was following a similar trajectory. The call and response continued to play out, and they had pushed things to a third run as well. Finals are for drama, and this was no disappointment. As Patti dropped for her third and final run, the crowd was screaming. How could they not be? Patti was theirs, this was her home mountain. The prodigal daughter had returned, and with her she was bringing pride for a nation that so desperately wanted to see her win. So, that’s what she did.
