Winter X Games 14 – Women’s Results

Over and out. Winter X Games 14 has wrapped. Four days in Aspen delivered five-peats, double three-peats, and back-to-back golds. Read on to find out how the women fared.

Friday, Jan. 29th – Women’s Skiing Superpipe

A deserving  Jen Hudak won Women’s SuperPipe Gold. In her sixth Winter X, the 23 year old Utah local spent the last three years pushing progressively harder toward the top of the podium. Last year she finished second by a microscopic margin and Winter X 14 turned out to be her year.

1. Jen Hudak
2. Megan Gunning
3. Roz Groenewoud
4. Mirjam Jaeger
5. Anais Caradeux
6. Sarah Burke

Saturday, Jan. 30 -  Women’s Snowboard X

In the Snowboard X Lindsey Jacobellis defended her title, but not without a lot of heat from Helene Olafsen. Watch for this rivalry to be another one that will  be continued in Vancouver.

1. Lindsey Jacobellis
2. Helene Olafsen
3.  Joanie Anderson
4. Maria Ramberger
5. Alexandra Jekova
6. Emilie Aubry

Saturday, Jan. 30 – Women’s Snowboard Superpipe

As expected, the Women’s Superpipe ended up being  a competition between Gretchen Bleiler and Kelly Clark .  In her final turn, Clark needed to best Bleiler’s 96.66; she dropped and stomped her entire run, but it was too close to call.  Gretchen probably had more technical tricks, but Kelly had a lot of amplitude and tricks, too.  In the end,  Bleiler took the top prize, becoming the only woman to win four times. Hannah Teter took third but her score was 26 points shy of Bleiler’s.

1. Gretchen Bleiler
2. Kelly Clark
3. Hannah Teter
4. Soko Yamaoka
5. Ellery Hollingsworth
6. Elena Hight

Sunday, Jan 31 – Women’s Slopestyle

Jenny Jones won the Women’s Slopestyle final for the second year in a row. She out-shredded Jamie Anderson and Janna Meyen-Weatherby, neither of whom were at Winter X last year.

It was a progressive day in the park. Janna Meyen-Weatherby was incredibly close to nailing a cab nine, which would’ve been a Winter X first for women. Unfortunately, the landing ended up earning her bronze behind Jamie Anderson’s silver but she certainly lit a fire during the comp.

1. Jenny Jones
2. Jamie Anderson
3. Janna Meyen-Weatherby
4. Kjersti Oestgaard Buass
5. Hana Beaman
6. Cheryl Maas

Women’s Skier X

History was made when France’s Ophelie David took home her fourth straight Women’s Skier X gold medal, making her the first skier — male or female — of any Winter X skiing discipline to four-peat. The 33-year-old mother of two passed two Canadian women — Kelsey Serwa, 20, and Ashleigh McIvor, 26 — wjp finished second and third respectively, halfway through the course and outlasted them to the finish to claim a record fourth gold medal.

1. Ophelie David
2. Kelsey Serwa
3. Ashleigh McIvor
4. Fanny Smith
5. Marte Gjefsen
6. Aleisha Cline

Oh, and if you hadn’t already guessed, Shaun White took home gold in the Men’s Superpipe final.

Winter X Games 14: Bring it on

As temperatures drop, the excitement heats up in Aspen, which is hosting the Winter X Games for the ninth consecutive year. Most of the action will take place over the next four days – and the invited rider list reads like a who’s who of winter sports. This year’s Games should prove to be a showcase for the progress female action sports athletes have made in the genre.

Highlights of WX14 will include snowboarder Torah Bright and freeskier Sarah Burke who are both returning to Aspen in a bid to reclaim gold.

You’ll also see a lot of halfpipe queen Gretchen Bleiler. The only woman to win WX SuperPipe 3 times, Gretchen also has silver from WX ‘07, silver from the 2006 Torino Olympics Halfpipe and an ESPY as 2008’s Best Female Action Sports Athlete.

In boardercross, 24-year-old Lindsey Jacobellis is considered royalty and ranked #1 in the FIS World Cup for 2009. She is an Olympic silver medalist from 2006 and five-time WX Games gold medalist.

Two years ago , Jamie Anderson became the youngest X Game gold winner when she won the women’s snowboard slopestyle. The Two-time WX Slopestyle gold medalist Anderson fractured her hip two weeks before WX ‘09. At the U.S. Open two months later, she ruptured her spleen, bringing a cruel end to the roughest season of her young career. But she kicked off the 2009/10 season right: winning the Billabong BroDown in Aug., Burton New Zealand Open in Nov. and Dew Tour Breck last month.

Also not to be overlooked is Kelly Clark, 26, who is competing in her tenth Winter X Games. One of the most decorated women in competitive snowboarding; Kelly has collected 6 WX SuperPipe medals, Olympic gold from the ‘02 Games, an ESPY for 2002 Action Sport Athlete of the Year and has won the Grand Prix Halfpipe title each of the past three years.

As one of the most X-treme winter sports events in the world, Winter X attracts an international array of gravity-defying athletes. Money (record purses this year), medals and worldwide fame are all up for grabs as athletes compete in skiing, snowboard and snocross so catch all the action today through Sunday.

Get ready to be X-cited for X-cellent performances. Some of the weekend’s highlights include:

Sat. Jan. 30: 2:00 – 3:30 pm Snowboard Snowboarder X  Women’s Final
Sat. Jan. 30: 7:30 – 8:30 pm Snowboard SuperPipe Women’s Final
Sun. Jan. 31: 10:00 – 12:15 pm Skiier X Women’s Final
Sun. Jan. 31: 12:00 – 1:00 pm Snowboard Slopestyle Women’s Final

Winter X Games 14 is on in Aspen, Colo., from Thursday, Jan. 28 to Sunday, Jan. 31. Much of the event will air live on ESPN and ESPN2.

Pretty Tough Trivia: “Superman” is not the man of steel; it’s when a rider lays flat in the air, both hands reach under the board to grab the toe side and or the shin of each boot, both legs are bent and the board is pulled up behind the rider.

Kelly Clark heading to Vancouver

Snowboarder Kelly Clark secured a trip to her third Olympics this week.

Clark defeated 2006 gold medal winner Hannah Teter to make her two for two this season in the U.S. Grand Prix events, which are being used to determine the riders who will represent the U.S. in Vancouver next month.

“Before the last Olympics, I qualified last,” Clark said of the 2006 effort, where she was a late qualifier and finished fourth at the Games. “So, yeah, this feels really good. It gives me a chance to use the rest of the season to work on things, practice my harder jumps in competition.”

There are three more Olympic qualifiers this month, starting Friday with another event at Mammoth Mountain. The full team will be selected at the end of January.

Throughout the comp, signs in the stands paid tribute to injured snowboarder Kevin Pearce, who suffered a brain injury during a fall last week while training.  Fortunately, news comes today that his condition has been upgraded and he’s improving.

Kelly Clark, Jamie Anderson win Burton New Zealand titles

New Zealand’s largest snowboarding event, the Burton New Zealand Open Snowboarding Championships, came to a close after four intense days of competition. Part of the Burton Global Open Series and the Swatch Ticket To Ride World Snowboard Tour, the 7th Annual New Zealand Open showcased some the world’s top snowboarders competing in halfpipe and slopestyle competitions for over NZ$50,000 in prize money.

Hundreds of competitors from all over the world flocked to Cardrona Alpine Resort to compete, and action got underway on Wednesday with men’s and women’s slopestyle pre-qualifications and qualifications. Men’s and women’s halfpipe qualifications went down on Thursday, followed by men’s and women’s slopestyle semifinal and finals on Friday with Jamie Anderson (USA) and Sebastien Toutant (CAN) riding away with the top spots worth $6,000 each.

Saturday saw a field of 40 men and 21 women compete for the halfpipe titles worth NZ$6,000. In the women’s competition Kelly Clark and Jiayu Liu battled it out in semifinals with huge amplitude and clean spins, while Elizabeth Beerman just bumped Kiwi Kendall Brown from advancing on to final.

Halfpipe finals consisted of three runs each for men and women, with the women first to drop. The Asian contingent finished strong taking four of the top eight spots in the women’s finals, with Zhifeng Sun from China taking third. Her winning run featured an impressive frontside 900. Jiayu Liu (CHN) rode away with second with a run that featured back-to-back 720s and back-to-back 540s. But it was Kelly Clark that pulled it out with a whopping score of 83.67. Her winning run started with a massive frontside air followed by a backside 540 indy, into a frontside 720 tailgrab, followed by a Cab 720, finishing with a frontside 540 indy.

Clark had this to say of her win, “I felt really good today; I got to try new things. I like progressing, and when you ride against a solid group of competitors it pushes me to do more. I’m happy that I did well for my first contest of the summer, especially going in to an Olympic year.”

With the Burton New Zealand Open finished, the next stop in the BGOS is the European Open, taking place January 9-16, 2010 in Laax, Switzerland. The European Open is the second stop on the 2009-2010 Burton Global Open Series.

Jamie Anderson is currently in the lead for the Burton Global Open Series Championship titles and a piece of the $200,000 prize purse. With only two results on her account so far, 08/09 Swatch TTR World Champion Kelly Clark moves into world no. 7 with her victory in New Zealand.

State of Vermont hopes to make snowboarding an official sport

The state flower of Vermont is the red clover. The sugar maple is the official tree of the Green Mountain State. And within the next year, several legislators hope to make snowboarding the official sport of Vermont.

How awesome would it be if every state had its own official sport and one day out of the year was designated a state holiday just for that sport.  Hawaii could claim surfing while Californians take a day for kiteboarding. The official sport in Idaho could be cow-tipping. Florida might make swimming the official sport. Rhode Island could adopt sailing.

The bill currently sitting in the Vermont legislature cites the importance snowboarding plays in the economic and historical well-being of the state.

Colorado has skiing and snowboarding as its state sports and some Vermont legislators would like to see the dual sports designated as official sports in their state. With competing pieces of legislation sitting in committee, lawmakers do not expect to tackle the state sport issue until the 2010 session.

Both options make sense since skiing and snowboarding have a long history in Vermont:

In 1934, the country’s first ski area opened outside of Woodstock when the first rope tow ski lift was installed, leading to the nation’s first ski race on Mount Mansfield the same year.

Four years later, C. Minot Dole founded the National Ski Patrol in Vermont, using his model to convince the U.S. Army to activate a division of soldiers on skis.

The Suicide Six Resort in Pomfret was the first American resort to allow snowboarding in 1982. Vermont was also the first state to host a snowboard park.

Additionally, Vermont resident Jake Burton Carpenter founded the first snowboard company in 1977 and perfected the technology to build the boards.

A number of Vermonters have excelled in the Winter Olympic games as well, from skier Barbara Ann’s gold medal in 1972 to the first-place snowboarding victories by Hannah Teter, Ross Powers and West Dover’s Kelly Clark.

While we wait to see what happens in Vermont, what do you think should be the official sport in your state?

Janna Meyen-Weatherby wins Chicken Jam Slopestyle

The halfpipe portion of the Roxy Chicken Jam finished on Saturday with Kelly Clark pulling out the win. Her run included a Frontside Air, Backside 540 Mute, Frontside 540, Method, Frontside 720 and a Cab 720.

Top Three Halfpipe:

1. Kelly Clark
2. Mercedes Nicoll
3. Sarah Conrad

High winds rolled into Mammoth on Sunday and the Slopestyle event was pushed to this morning.

Jamie Anderson, out with a spleen injury, missed out on the $50k TTR Title and after the Slope event Kelly Clark was crowned the new women’s TTR Champ.

The results of the Roxy Chicken Jam Slopestyle looked like this:

1. Janna Weatherby
2. Jenny Jones
3. Lisa Wiik
4. Isabelle Lalive
5. Chanelle Sladics
6. Raewyn Reid
7. Silvia Mittermueller
8. Cheryl Maas
9. Tara Dakides
10. Hana Beaman

For complete TTR rankings, hit up www.ttrworldtour.com

US Open Snowboarding Championship underway

The best snowboarders in the world have been gathering at the Stratton Mountain Resort in Vermont for the 27th Annual US Open Snowboarding World Championship. The qualifying action kicked earlier this week amid balmy temps and bluebird skies and continues tonight at 6:15 p.m. with an invitational quarterpipe competition followed by a free RJD2  concert at 8:00 p.m. in the USO Sponsor Village at the Sunbowl.

Top riders including  Olympic gold medalist Kelly Clark,  Hannah Teter and Ellery Hollingsworth,  X-Games Gold Medalist Torah Bright, Asian Open winner Chanelle Sladics and TTR World Champion Jamie Anderson are all participating in the event. Hardly surprising as it is one of the first snowboarding events in the world to offer male and female competitors equal winnings.

The US Open is the last stop on the Burton Global Open Series and offers riders the chance to earn points towards a male and female championship title, each worth $100,000, currently the largest single payout in competitive snowboarding. 

This year’s Open features a different competition schedule than the past few years with all events and concerts taking place at the Sunbowl area of Stratton Mountain.   On the women’s side,  50 athletes vie for five spots in the semifinals, where they meet up with 16 invited riders.

Saturday, March 21st will feature men’s and women’s semi-final and final halfpipe competitions, an autograph session in the sponsor village, topped off with a Santigold concert immediately following the halfpipe awards presentation at 4:15 p.m. in the Sunbowl.

Sunday, March 22nd, will kick off with the junior jam halfpipe competition, followed by men’s and women’s slopestyle finals, after which three major titles will be awarded: the $100,000 Burton Global Open Series men’s and women’s title, the Volvo Most Valuable Rider Award and the Men’s Swatch TTR World Tour Champion award. 

A crowd in excess of 40,000 people are expected to attend the event which will without doubt have its fair share of thrills and spills. If you cannot make it to Stratton Mountain Resort in Vermont you can watch all of the semi-finals and finals live on March 21 and 22 on Go211.com, where webcasts and highlights of the competitions will also be available for on-demand viewing once the event concludes. NBC will show all the action on Sunday, March 29 from 1:00-2:30 p.m. EST.

Show up with 4 or more people in your car when you park at Stratton to be entered into the US Open carpool raffle. If your raffle number is chosen, you will be the lucky winner of Burton’s 2010 eco-friendly GMP products!

Bright Clinches SuperPipe Final; Clark Raises Dew Cup

The first annual Winter Dew Tour wrapped up this weekend at Northstar-At-Tahoe. Top athletes from the first two stops battled it out for the overall Dew Cup, while fans enjoyed huge terrain, warm days and Lake Tahoe itself.

Aussie Torah Bright proved victorious at the Superpipe Final, despite gray skies and rainy conditions. In her second attempt, Bright earned a whopping 95.5 by putting together an innovative run, consisting of a flawless backside 3 to switch backside 7.

“Torah’s switch backside spins were so technical; she was doing tricks you never see in the pipe,” said second-place winner Kelly Clark. “She clearly threw down the best run of the day.”

Vermonter Hannah Teter earned third-place with a beautiful first run.

In the end, Clark was handed the Dew Cup for her overall point-total of 280, which she earned with second-first-second place-finishings at each respective Winter Dew Tour stop  (silver at Breckenridge, gold at Mount Snow, silver at Tahoe).  She now leaves for Japan representing the U.S. at the Asian Superpipe contest which will take place this coming weekend.

Superpipe Finals Northstar at Tahoe

1. Torah Bright – 95.50
2. Kelly Clark – 90.00
3. Hannah Teter – 83.50

Winter Dew Cup Final Superpipe Standings

1.  Kelly Clark – 280 pts.
2.  Hannah Teter – 245 pts.
3.  Elena Hight – 205 pts.

Clark & Jacobellis capture Cypress wins

You’ll be hearing a lot about Cypress Mountain over the next year. Despite the resort name, there is no actual Cypress Mountain in the area, but it is the name of the Official Freestyle Skiing and Snowboard Venue for the 2010 Winter Games offering some of the best conditions in North Vancouver BC.

The half-pipe and the venues for the moguls and aerials were completed in the summer of 2007. Since then, Cypress has been hosting a series of test events attracting all the top winter athletes.

This past weekend, Olympic gold medalists and Kelly Clark (Mt. Snow, VT) and Shaun White (Carlsbad, CA) took to what will be the 2010 Olympic pipe to win a World Cup.

Clark led the way for the women for the second weekend in a row with Jiayu Liu of China second and Teter third.

“This is probably the deepest field of athletes we have seen this year from any event. There were some incredible snowboarders here today,” Clark said.

Clark put down a backside 5, frontside 7, cab 3, frontside 5, backside air to win the event.

According to Clark, pipe conditions were such that one had to be on their A game in order to ride it perfectly.

“Today was the best day for the halfpipe. It got a little bit more vert. It’s still a bit soft in the flat bottom. You have to be really technically on top of your game because any edging will slow you down a lot,” Clark said.

Teter was happy to be able to start off her road to the Olympics with a bronze medal in the halfpipe.

“I really liked it [the pipe] my third place is a really good way to start out my experience in this Olympic pipe,” Teter said.

A day earlier, Lindsey Jacobellis’ (Stratton Mountain, VT) maintained her status as the most dominant woman in snowboardcross as she won her event to retain her position as the World Cup SBX leader.

“It’s one of the best courses I have ridden all year,” Jacobellis said. “It flowed really nicely and it’s nice that I did so well.”

Jacobellis won each of her heats, but it was a tactical line that shot her ahead in the final round.

“It feels great and I’m happy to win any race. At the entrance of the first banked turn I was in third and then dropped in low for a pass and drifted up and I felt like I got some speed out of that turn, then I just tried to maintain the lead for the rest of the way down,” Jacobellis said.

According to the winner, however, the fact that she won on what will be the Olympic course was not a factor for her victory celebration Friday.

“It will be the same course builder for the Olympics. But, it’s still a year away. There’s still more competitions to do and I’m just going to take one at a time,” Jacobellis said. “It would be nice to up my medal but I’ll just try to take it one event at a time because it’s still so far away.” 

OFFICIAL RESULTS
2009 LG SNOWBOARD FIS WORLD CUP
Cypress Mountain, BC – Feb. 14, 2009
Halfpipe

Women
1. Kelly Clark, Mt. Snow, CO, 42.6
2. Jiayu Liu, China, 39.0
3. Hannah Teter, Belmont, VT, 38.8
4. Gretchen Bleiler, Aspen, CO, 37.0
5. Sophir Rodriguez, France, 34.4

Cypress Mountain, BC – Feb. 13, 2009
Snowboardcross

Women
1. Lindsey Jacobellis, Stratton Mountain, VT
2. Olivia Nobs, Switzerland
3. Helene Olafsen, Norway
4. Maelle Ricker, Canada
5. Mellie Francon, Switzerland

SNB: U.S. women sweep pipe in Italy

The women of U.S. Snowboarding blew the competition out of the water Saturday as they swept the podium of a World Cup in Bardonecchia, Italy. In the fourth Halfpipe contest of the 2009 LG Snowboard FIS World Cup, Kelly Clark came in first followed by teammates Hannah Teter and Gretchen Blieler in second and third, respectively.  

“For me personally it’s a good feeling to win where I was defeated three years ago,” Clark said. “Hannah was riding very strong but I just did my run as I wanted it. I’m glad that I won this great event and that the U.S. took one, two and three.”

Teter had taken the lead due to a “Backside Air”, “Back-to-back 540’s”, a “Frontside 720” and a “Cab 540” Clark came back having the right answer in her ninth World Cup event throwing in a “Frontside Air”, a “Backside 540” as well as “Back-to-back 720’s” and a “Frontside 540” to conclude her run.

Clark just missed the podium at the same venue at the 2006 Torino Games when she placed fourth trying to defend her gold medal. While not the Olympics, Clark must surely feel some redemption her win this weekend. It was Clark’s third career World Cup victory and second in Bardonecchia, the first came in 2005.

Teter notched her seventh career World Cup podium, while Blieler grabbed her tenth.

The American domination didn’t stop at the podium. American women took five of the top 15 spots with Elena Hight in eighth and Ellery Hollingsworth in 12th.

“Bardonecchia has the most snow they’ve had in about 50 years and we got here and the pipe was challenging. We had just come from some great competitions and we showed up to a smaller pipe and challenging conditions,” U.S. snowboarding halfpipe head coach, Mike Jankowski said. “We knew there was only one way to go and that was up. So, we said every day it’s going to get better. We pushed our way through semi finals and got our way through to finals.”

The pipers now head to the 2010 Olympic venue at Cypress Mountain, B.C. for a World Cup competition and some valuable experience. “We just take it one pipe at a time and we’re definitely not getting ahead of ourselves,” Jankowski said. “As long as the pipe is in good shape, whether it’s a Revolution Tour, a Grand Prix or the Olympics, we go there to win and I expect our athletes to push hard for the win.”

OFFICIAL RESULTS
2009 LG SNOWBOARD FIS WORLD CUP
Bardonecchia, Italy – Feb. 7, 2009
Halfpipe

Women
1. Kelly Clark, Mt. Snow, VT, 45.1
2. Hannah Teter, Belmont, VT, 43.2
3. Gretchen Bleiler, Aspen, CO, 39.4
4. Holly Crawford, Australia, 36.3
5. Kjersti Buaas, Norway, 34.9

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