Alex Hall and Nick Goepper claim US 1-2 in men’s freeski slopestyle

It wasn’t the clean sweep of eight years ago, but a pair of Americans topped the men’s freeski slopestyle podium on Wednesday morning after Alex Hall soared to Olympic gold ahead of team-mate Nick Goepper, who took the silver.

Sweden’s Jesper Tjader won the bronze ahead of Andri Ragettli, the defending world champion from Switzerland who qualified in first place but settled for fourth on another bitterly cold morning in the mountains roughly 120km northwest of Beijing.

Twelve entrants made three trips apiece down the 665-metre course filled with rails, jumps and obstacles and an eye-catching replica of China’s Great Wall with the best score counting towards their final position.

Hall, a 23-year-old born in Fairbanks, Alaska, wasted no time setting the target, putting down a spectacular opening run for a score of 90.01 that none of his rivals could approach.

He punctuated it with a sensational final jump known as the right side double 1080 pretzel one, halting his rotation in mid-air before reversing his spin and landing cleanly, a trick Hall said he learned in the fall.

“I definitely knew I wanted to try the trick after making it to finals but I wasn’t sure if I was going to be able to do it,” he said. “I’ve been doing it a little bit but it’s still a really, really hard trick for me just because it’s hard to judge the rotation and really tough when I don’t know my speed exactly and it’s been a little tough with wind this week.”

Goepper, who was bidding for a complete set of Olympic slopestyle medals after taking bronze in 2014 and silver in 2018, went into second with a score of 86.48 after the best of the middle attempts.

Neither of the American leaders could improve on their scores on their final trips and the outcome