USA’s slopestyle star Colby Stevenson still inspired by "magical” Sochi sweep

“Olympic sweep,” the 24-year-old American skier Colby Stevenson said to Olympics.com, nodding with a kind of deep satisfaction. “A U.S sweep is a pretty cool way to start off our sport at the Olympics.”

There’s a special kind of grin that spreads over the faces of the American slopestyle freeski team here in Beijing when talk turns to Sochi and 2014. It doesn’t matter if it’s the veteran Nick Goepper, bronze winner in that Sochi podium sweep, or two-time Olympian and rail specialist Alex Hall – or even a debutant like Stevenson.

It was the big-stage Olympic debut of the sport they all love, often a haven for former ski racers who crave more. For skiers who wanted a kind of freedom and creative expansiveness that not even the moguls or the previous generation’s aerials could provide.

When the announcement was made, in 2012, that freeski slopestyle would be added to the Olympic program, Stevenson was barely 15 years old. But young as he was, everything changed that day.

“I knew I was going to do it [slopestyle] even if it wasn’t for the Olympics,” said the 24-year-old whose passion for his sport fairly oozes from him – and who’s already won a silver medal here in Beijing in the freeski big air debut at the Shougang Industrial Park. “But that possibility just added a new layer of excitement."

Still just 16 when the qualifiers for the first-ever freeski slopestyle events in Sochi began, Stevenson was competing for a place in that debutant USA team. “I didn’t quite have the level yet of riding to make the team,” said Stevenson, who admits to a bit of a wild streak in his early years on the competition circuit. “But it was thrilling to be a part of the process for the first time.”

And when the first slopestyle event at the