[OLYMPICS] Norway's Birk Ruud Takes Gold In Men's Slopestyle While Alex Hall Takes Silver For USA - SnowBrains

"OlympicsNorwegian Freeskier Birk Ruud came away with gold in a Men's Slopestyle Final that featured athletes struggling to land their tricks through the rail section and graceful airs with dizzying numbers of spins. American Alex Hall came away with silver and Kiwi Luca Harrington came from behind in the final run to secure bronze. The whole field was going for gold on the first run, not holding back any technicality on the opening rails."

"More than half the field fell or made minor mistakes, mailing in the rest of the run to wait for the second and third runs. Birk Ruud strung together a top to bottom performance putting him in the early lead. Switzerland's Andri Ragettli and Sweden's Jesper Tjader in second and third. Tjader's opening run commanded respect with a switch backflip onto the first rail, but Ruud's second and third rails brought similar levels of difficulty, where Tjader backed off a little bit."

"In the second run, Alex Hall flawlessly executed a set of tricks that was not the most technically demanding of the field, but the flow and style of the whole run helped propel him from fifth to second place. A few other competitors improved on botched first runs, making it down clean, but moving into the final run, at least half a dozen skiers had shown they had the technical chops to win, they just had to stomp every trick."

Birk Ruud won gold in the men's slopestyle final after a top-to-bottom performance and a final run that left him atop the leaderboard. Alex Hall took silver by improving on his earlier run with exceptional flow and style, moving from fifth to second. Luca Harrington climbed into bronze with a 630 onto his first rail and three massive airs on the lower course. Many competitors fell or made mistakes on opening rails, while others cleaned up second runs. Sebastian Schjerve attempted a double switch up on a 60-foot rail and landed big jumps but finished off the podium.

Read at SnowBrains