Listen to this article
Estimated 2 minutes
The audio version of this article is generated by AI-based technology. Mispronunciations can occur. We are working with our partners to continually review and improve the results.
Follow Winter Olympic SportsPersonalize Your Feed
On a frosty night in the Italian Alps, the queen of big air, Anna Gasser, bid adieu to her favourite Olympic event.
She left without a medal, but that didn’t make it all bad. The snowboarders who won them, led by the new queen, Kokomo Murase of Japan, all knew they had Gasser to thank for pushing the envelope to help the sport look as good as it did Monday night.
“I’m happy to pass on the crown, the big crown, to Kokomo,” said Gasser, the Austrian who finished eighth. “She really deserves it and, yeah, it’s crazy to see how far the sport has come in the last years.”
Kokomo, silver medallist Zoi Sadowski-Synnott and third-place finisher Seung-eun Yu all got to the podium with triple-cork, 1440-degree jumps — that’s three head-over-heels flips with another rotation mixed in — the likes of which weren’t seen in women’s big air at the last Olympics, where Gasser won her second straight gold medal.
No Canadians competed in the final.
On Saturday, Japanese teammates Kira Kimura and Ryoma Kimata won gold and silver, respectively, in men’s big air.
Two-time defending champion Anna Gasser finished eighth, falling short in her bid to become the first snowboarder to win three consecutive Olympic gold medals. She fell on her first jump and had a costly bobble while landing her second.
Quebec City’s Laurie Blouin was 14th in Sunday’s qualification round, with 12 advancing. She was 3.25 points shy of the final qualifier, Australia’s Tess Coady.
The 29-year-old Blouin was making her third Olympic appearance. She captured silver in slopestyle at the 2018 Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, and entered these Games seventh on the World Snowboard points list.
Juliette Pelchat of Whistler, B.C., was 16th in qualifying at her first Olympics.
Source link
