A new Swiss queen took to the throne as Olympic slopestyle champion in the Genting slopestyle park this morning. Following on from the success of Sarah Hoefllin’s Pyeongchang gold four years ago, Mathilde Gremaud (who landed silver in 2018) snatched the gold for consecutive Swiss wins in the women’s slopestyle.
After a pretty nervy qualification round, things got off to a similar start in the finals, with freezing conditions and strong winds continuing. Young Scot Kirsty Muir continued to show her promise for future Olympic podiums from the get-go, with a tasty dub 1260 on the bottom booter, coming up just a little short. Kelly Sildaru, coming off the back of topping the qualifications, came out on top of the first run with a clean, but restrained, first run.
Although competitors were, arguably, keeping their cards close to their chests in the first heat, the second runs were where things began to heat up, with high scoring runs from Gremaud (86.56), Tatalina (74.16) and Voisin (74.28). The run from Gremaud was actually the medal-winning run, where she threw a techy top rail section with a huge dub 1080 on the angled booters.
Much has been said about Gu’s ability to perform under pressure, following her big air win and grabbing second in yesterday’s qualifier, and this was certainly true with her final run of the day, which netted her a score of 86.23. The clean and technical run just fell short of Gremaud’s second run of 86.56.
Kelly Sildaru dropped in last and, with the knowledge that she was taking home at least a bronze, she went big off the angled booters with a huge switch 1080, sadly missing her bind and not nailing the trick in a clean, points-scoring, way.
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