Both Olympic snowboard slopestyle champions came up short in the Winter X Games in Aspen, Colo., on Sunday.
Jamie Anderson finished second to Norway’s Silje Norendal for a second straight year at X Games. Anderson had the lead with a 91.33 in her second run (video here), until Norendal posted 93.66 in the last run of the competition (video here). New Zealand’s Christy Prior won bronze.
Anderson is a four-time X Games gold medalist and has won a medal in all nine of her X Games slopestyle appearances, dating to her debut at age 15 in 2006.
Norendal finished 11th at the Sochi Olympics.
Later Sunday, Sage Kotsenburg was fifth in the men’s slopestyle in Aspen. Kotsenburg, the surprise Sochi gold medalist, improved over his 15th-place finish last year. He’s never won the X Games.
Canada’s Mark McMorris prevailed in slopestyle, with a second-run 96 (video here), two days after he won Big Air gold in Aspen. McMorris, the 2012 and 2013 X Games slopestyle champion, broke a rib at last year’s Winter X Games and won bronze in Sochi.
Norway’s Stale Sandbech won silver, just as he did in Sochi, with a 95-point run. Sweden’s Sven Thorgren took bronze with a 92.
In ski halfpipe, U.S. Olympic champion David Wise finished fourth behind Canadian winner Simon d’Artois. Wise had won X Games the previous three years.
That left women’s halfpipe skier Maddie Bowman as the only Sochi gold medalist to win gold at this year’s Winter X Games.
Full X Games results can be found here.
