Team USA has a 1-2 punch atop the men’s freeski slopestyle podium.
Alex Hall earned gold and Nick Geopper earned silver in the event at the 2022 Winter Olympics on Tuesday. Sweden’s Jesper Tjader earned bronze.
Hall was the only skier to eclipse the 90-point mark, earning a 90.01 score on his first run. That number kept him in the lead through two runs and gave him a 3.53-point lead heading into the third run. The win gives Hall his first career Olympic hardware.
Goepper jumped into second place with a second-run score of 86.48 after posting just a 45.75 on his opening run. That second score kept him in the silver slot through the end of the competition and secured him his third straight Olympic medal in the event. He won bronze in the inaugural Olympic slopestyle competition at the 2014 Sochi Games before winning silver at the 2018 PyeongChang Games.
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Team USA also had another representative in the event. Colby Stevenson put up his best score on his first run with a 77.41, but he could not improve on that number in his final two attempts and finished seventhe. He had a chance to become the first U.S. athlete to win multiple individual medals at these Olympics after taking home silver in big air.
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The U.S. has dominated the men’s slopestyle event since it was introduced in 2014. It swept the podium in 2014 before Goepper was the lone Team USA competitor to medal in 2018. The U.S. now has six medals in the event, five more than any other country.
The top two finishers from this year’s qualifying could not grab medal positions in their final runs. Switzerland’s Andri Ragettli led qualifying with an 85.08 score before maxing out with an 83.50 in his second run on Tuesday and landing in fourth place. Norway’s Birk Ruud went from second in qualifying to fifth in the final with his third-run score of 79.33.
Here are the final standings:
- Alex Hall, United States: 90.01
- Nick Goepper, United States: 86.48
- Jesper Tjader, Sweden: 85.35
- Andri Ragettli, Switzerland: 83.50
- Birk Ruud, Norway: 79.33
- Fabian Boesch, Switzerland: 78.05
- Colby Stevenson, United States: 77.41
- Matej Svancer, Austria: 73.05
- Max Moffatt, Canada: 70.40
- Ben Barclay, New Zealand: 67.40
- Oliwer Magnusson, Sweden: 40.46
- Kim Gubser, Switzerland: DNS
