Kaitlyn Farrington is serious about adding slopestyle to her snowboarding repertoire.
The Sochi Olympic halfpipe champion submitted a video of her tricks on a slopestyle course from earlier this summer to Dew Tour officials, hoping to be invited to the Dec. 11-14 Mountain Championships in Breckenridge, Colo., in a discipline she said she hasn’t contested in a few years.
“Hopefully, I will get in,” Farrington, whose Olympic gold medal ought to carry a little clout, said in a phone interview Wednesday.
Farrington said regular slopestyle riders often nudge her to compete with them.
“That’s why I would really like to see how well I can do,” said the 24-year-old raised on an Idaho cattle ranch. “I’m a really good jumper. I hope I would be not far from them [the top slope riders].”
The world’s best slopestyle rider is U.S. Olympic teammate Jamie Anderson, the Sochi gold medalist.
Farrington said she’s tailoring her 2014-15 season around two competitions, Dew Tour and the Winter X Games, Jan. 22-25 in Aspen, Colo. She does not expect to contest the 2015 World Championships in Austria.
“The past two times I’ve done World Champs, I’ve broken my wrist right before,” she said. “World Champs reminds me of breaking my wrist too much. I’m afraid to go back.”
Farrington traveled plenty as an Olympic gold medalist the last seven months. One of the highlights was a trip with the U.S. Olympic team to the White House in April.
There, she met President Barack Obama and “heckled” him during a speech in front of the U.S. contingent and media.
In a closing remark, Obama told the young athletes, “Don’t tear up the place,” inside the East Room.
“We already did!” shouted a female voice in response. That turned out to be Farrington, who also said she did “The Worm” dance in front of a pianist inside the White House.
