Elena Hight has been a mainstay on the Winter X Games circuit, collecting three silver medals and two bronze medals since making her debut at just 13 years old in 2003.
14 years later, she finally won her first gold medal in the women’s snowboard halfpipe final Saturday night in Aspen, Colo.
“I don’t even know what to say,” Hight said, shaking her head.
China’s Xeutong Cai finished second, followed by American Chloe Kim.
Kim entered as the pre-race favorite, having not lost on the halfpipe in over a year. But the 16-year-old fell early in her first run, just moments after competition was interrupted for about 10 minutes when half of the course’s floodlights shut off. Television commentators described her second and final run as “probably the tamest run we have ever seen from Chloe in an X Games.”
It was the first time that Kim, who was too young to compete at the 2014 Winter Olympics, failed to win a gold medal in her four X Games starts.
Earlier on Saturday, 19-year-old American Julia Marino claimed the women’s snowboard slopestyle gold medal. She became the first X Games rookie since 2000 to win two medals, after earning the snowboard big air bronze medal on Thursday.
“I don’t think I could ask for a better contest,” Marino said.
Marino bested fellow American Jamie Anderson, the 2014 Olympic champion and most decorated rider in X Games slopestyle history with 12 medals. Great Britain’s Katie Ormerod finished third.
Americans swept the men’s ski slopestyle podium at the Sochi Games, where the event was making its Olympic debut. But it was McRae Williams, after not even making the 2014 U.S. Olympic team, who stood on the podium in Aspen.
Williams earned the silver medal, behind Norway’s Oystein Braaten and ahead of Canada’s Alex Beaulieu-Marchand.
Braaten wiped out on his first run, scoring 8.66 points, the lowest of the 12 skiers in the finals. But the winner was determined based on a skier’s best score in either of the two final runs, and Braaten responded with a score of 94.33 points on his second run.
“I was so scared after my first run because I messed up a trick I’ve been landing all week,” Braaten admitted.
2014 Olympic champion Joss Christensen finished sixth, while 2014 Olympic silver medalist Gus Kenworthy was 10th and 2014 Olympic bronze medalist Nick Goepper was 11th. Goepper, who won gold at every X Games from 2013-2015, is the only skier with multiple wins in the event at the last 14 X Games.
Kenworthy was competing less than 15 hours after finishing 10th in the ski halfpipe final.
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