Last Updated on February 12, 2018 by CCAR Staff
BONGPYEONG, South Korea – Fighting through gusting winds on the Olympic slopestyle course on Monday, California’s yoga-loving snowboarding boss Jamie Anderson proved herself without audacious trickery, pacing toward her second Olympic gold medal with a determined, athletic resolve to stay on her feet.
It was a task that befuddled all but five of the 27-woman field. Twenty-two riders crashed and stumbled through the course, leaving the few riders who could put down clean runs in podium contention. They didn’t need those daunting double corks or boggling spins. They needed to battle occasional but fierce gusts of winds up to 15 miles per hour and stay upright.
“So terrible. They shouldn’t have run it,” said the Czech Republic’s Sarka Panocochova. “I mean we worked so hard to get here. This is the Olympics. Come on guys. You have more days to have this contest.”
The competition was delayed an hour due to the weather conditions.
Anderson, 27, scored 83.00 on her first run which was good enough for the gold. Having wrapped up the gold, she didn’t need to take a second run. Finishing second was Canadian Laurie Blovin at 76.33 and third was Silje Novendahl of Norway at 73.91.
The Olympic contest on Monday was hardly a showcase of the progression of women’s snowboarding, where the trickery has been amplified in recent years with more women following men into the realm of backflipping spins. But the showdown was a display of incredible athleticism and strategy.
