The triple cork makes its debut during Snowboard Big Air final at Winter X Games Aspen 2012
The rate at which snowboarding is progressing is astonishing. Throughout the previous year, the exciting athletes remained busy pushing the boundaries of the sport while adding lethal doubles and even triples to their arsenal of tricks. It was only natural to assume that these monumental tricks would eventually make their way into Winter X Games.
As expected, the young-guns of snowboarding had no intention of walking away from Aspen, Colorado, without showing off the colossal tricks that they had acquired since leaving the Buttermilk Mountain in January last year.
Therefore, the latest edition of Winter X Games saw some of the best snowboarders from around the world coverage to Aspen to treat the fans of action sports to a night of style and innovation, hoping to leave the crowd and judges stunned and getting their hands on the coveted Winter X gold medal in Snowboard Big Air contest.
During the elimination rounds of the contest, the likes of Canadian Mark McMorris and Sebastien Toutant, Belgium’s Seppe Smits, Norwegian Torstein Horgmo and American Eric Willett put on enthralling performances to earn their place in the five-man final. Throughout the elimination round, the crowd witnessed the exciting athletes pulling off various varieties of 1080 and double corks.
However, the trick that the snowboarding fans were anticipating at Winter X Games was yet to be thrown. There was hardly anybody who wanted the Big Air competition to end without feasting their eyes on the manoeuvre that had sent waves in the snowboarding community last year, a triple cork 1440.
In a bid to accommodate the contest for the amount of progress that snowboarding had made in recent times, the Winter X Games organisers had installed a bigger, 80-foot step-up style jump to give riders more air time. However, there was a big question mark as to whether the jump was big enough to open up gates for a triple cork spin.
Despite the strong temptation for digging into his bag of tricks to pull out a triple cork, the 18-year-old McMorris decided to avoid the risk and went for a front-side double cork mute 1080 in his first run to score a 31.00.
The 24-year-old Horgmo, however, had no plans of letting the opportunity of showing his version of the triple cork spin to a massive crowd go to waste and thus immediately went for it with the intended motivation of successfully defending his throne. However, he failed to land the trick successfully on his first attempt and continued to remain out of luck during his second and third run as well.
Watching his Norwegian rival boldly attempt the highly-anticipated trick caused McMorris to get over his jitters and attempt the triple cork spin as well. After a few failed attempts, the young sensation successfully created history by landing a massive back-side triple cork mute 1440, sending the crowd in frenzy. The trick earned him a 49 out of a maximum of 50 points.
“I didn't really think it was going to come down to triples because there wasn't a lot of airtime with the jump,” McMorris said after the final. “If you did send it deep, it made for a lot of airtime, but it also made for a lot of impact in the landing.”
Horgmo went for the trick once again in his fourth and final run and managed to nail it this time. His version of the back-side triple cork 1440 went bigger than that of his Canadian rival’s and earned him a perfect 50 for the effort. However, the overall calculations for the top-three were to be made by considering the combined total of the competitor’s two best tricks. While the triple corks were indeed the highlight of McMorris’ and Horgmo’s runs in the final, it was actually the front-side double cork mute that came to the rescue of McMorris and put him on the highest spot on the podium with his two-run total of 80.00 points.
Despite landing a perfect triple cork, Horgmo had to do with a silver medal this year for his efforts as he finished with a combined-total of 76.00.
The Montreal-based Toutant also finished with a combined-total, with his best tricks scoring a 41.00 and 35.00. However, he was forced to concede runner-up position to his Norwegian rival due to the latter’s bigger single-trick score.
Willett, who had shined the brightest during the elimination round, was unable to find a place on the podium in the final and eventually left the event site medal-less.
To say that the Snowboard Big Air final completely lived up to the expectations, if not exceeded them, as it would not be an overstatement. Looking at the rate snowboarding is progressing, one can safely assume to get treated to an even more enthralling contest at Winter X Games next year.
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