STONEHAM, QUE.—Saturday night was all about the jumps in big air. On Sunday, it was the rails at the bottom of the slopestyle course that took centre stage. But the result in men’s snowboarding was similar: One Canadian stood on the top step of the podium only to be knocked to second by a teammate.
After Mark McMorris knocked Maxence Parrot to the second step on Saturday, Sebastien Toutant forced McMorris to settle for second in slopestyle, with Norway’s Marcus Kleveland in third. Canadian Brooke Voigt won bronze on the women’s side.
“It feels amazing,” said Toutant, the Montreal rider and crowd favourite. “I’ve been on the podium a couple times this year — but no wins really — so to come out with a win means so much to me.”
Slopestyle courses, where snowboarders and skiers flip and spin off multiple jumps and throw tricks sliding on and off rails, often leave the three jumps until the end. Here, they were at the start, forcing athletes to compose themselves for the technical rails after their high-adrenaline jumps.
“It’s stressful, for sure, but I think it’s cool to switch it up because that’s what’s cool about slopestyle — there’s no rules about putting the jumps or rails first,” Toutant said. “After you land your jumps, your legs are all shaky and then you have to land your rails. But once you do it, it feels amazing.”
McMorris, who is riding a string of podium finishes this season that put him in a good spot for a return trip to the Olympics, was happy to pick up another one.
“It’s all good, I’ll take it,” he said. “I’m just happy with the way I rode. It’s a judged sport, it really could have went either way, we both had good runs.”
While McMorris is a podium regular, getting there in the women’s event was particularly welcome for Voigt, who hadn’t won a slopestyle medal since 2013. Americans Julia Marino and Jamie Anderson took the top two spots with Voigt finishing third on the strength of her second run.
Voigt’s podium finish is an important step in opening up 2018 Olympic quota spots for the team. Canada is likely to have three on the women’s side but with strong results in the qualifying period it could get four.
“There’s a lot of pressure on us for the next little while, as Olympic qualifying goes on, so it’s a big weight off my shoulders to get a podium,” Voigt said. “I really dislike riding rails after jumps because you’re adrenaline is really high and you need to be very calm for your rails. We’re all pretty hard on ourselves, there’s always things we’d like to fix, but I’m pretty happy with my second run.”
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