All set for start as Parrot flies in slopestyle heats
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Slopestyle made its Olympic debut yesterday without Shaun White and without any of the drama the sport’s biggest star feared when he decided to pull out of the event on the eve of the Games in Sochi, Russia.
Maxence Parrot of Canada posted a score of 97.50 to earn the top spot in qualifying, leading a pack of eight riders who moved automatically into the finals. The remaining athletes will return to the rapidly improving course tomorrow to vie for one of the four last spots.
Roope Tonteri of Finland, Staale Sandbech of Norway and Sven Thorgen of Sweden also had little trouble navigating the sun-splashed Ross Khutor mountain, all posting scores in the 90s that seemed to quell the notion the field was going to struggle on a course deemed anywhere from ambitious to treacherous during training.
Yet White’s absence overshadowed the premiere — a day before the Sochi Games opening ceremony — of one of the latest action sports to find its way onto the Olympic slopes.
The two-time halfpipe gold medalist was hoping to pull a halfpipe-slopestyle double but jammed his wrist in practice on Tuesday and decided he didn’t want to jeopardize his chance at becoming the first American male to win gold in three consecutive Winter Games.
White cited concerns about the course’s safety as the main reason for his change of heart, yet qualifying featured nothing but the typical spills that come with flinging yourself down a series of rails and daredevil-inviting jumps that looks like a mixture of skateboarding and gymnastics.
Canadian Mark McMorris, considered a gold medal favorite even before White pulled out, slammed into the snow during his first qualifying run, a jolt that did little to help the fractured rib he sustained at X Games last month. McMorris — dubbed “McRib” after his injury — responded with a smooth 89.25 on his next trip, but now will need to navigate the semifinals if he wants a shot at reaching the podium.
White’s decision to not even compete, earned him an unusual amount of criticism for one of the greatest snowboarders in history.
Canadian Sebastian Toutant called White out on Twitter after his withdrawal, claiming White’s real motivation was the realization he couldn’t win. The tweet was later deleted, but Toutant stood behind his stance yesterday that the course wasn’t too dangerous for the best riders in the world.
“Slopestyle is an extreme sport,” said Toutant, who earned a spot in the finals. “If you come here and think there’s no risk, go do something else.”
White did, though not early enough for the US to consider finding a potential replacement athlete. That’s what irked American Charles Guldemond, who felt all along White would find a way out of slopestyle.
“I was a little bummed,” Guldemond said. “There was a lot of guys I trained really hard with sitting in that fifth spot and it’s pretty unfortunate that they missed their opportunity to come to the Games, so that was a pretty big blow.”
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