Liz Copan / ecopan@summitdaily.com
ASPEN – With fewer than five minutes remaining in Saturday’s X Games men’s snowboard slopestyle final, Canadian star Darcy Sharpe dropped in ranked eighth – last place. Sharpe thought it he landed his best run he could jump up, maybe, into the medal mix.
But replacing Red Gerard in gold-medal position? That seemed a bit of a stretch.
“I did not think I could beat what Red was doing all day,” Sharpe said afterward, speaking on his first X Games Aspen gold. “We don’t pay that much attention, because we are kind of, like, in our own bubble. He was dropping right behind me, we gotta get back up there, (it’s) fast laps. But I didn’t think I was going to beat his riding because he was just so on point, dealing with the pressure, stomping.”
Seconds after Gerard dropped in with just under three minutes remaining for his fourth and final run, the unofficial ranking order bumped Sharpe from last to first. Talking on the win and the new score-less jam and judging format, Sharpe said he enjoyed the fresh approach though he wasn’t exactly sure what helped him jump to gold.
“It’s tough to say, Im a squirrely dude. I don’t know what anyone sees in me,” Sharpe said with a laugh.
Sharpe thinks the judges appreciated his rail riding, specifically his hard-way cab 2(60) pull-back. It’s a trick that has a snowboarder ride a rail unnaturally with a 260-degree rotation before rotating the opposite way of the body’s natural physics.
For the jump section, Sharpe felt his transition riding was rewarded, namely his front triple-cork landing which he rode smoothly into the side quarter-pipe hit at the bottom of the course.
“Even though it wasn’t a trick, it was tricky,” Sharpe said.
While Gerard sat in first for the majority of the competition and dropped into his last run still in first on the unofficial scoreboard, he ended up finishing with a bronze medal. Norwegian Mons Roisland jumped him for the silver medal.
Despite the bittersweet element of going in the final moments from gold-medal position to bronze-medal position, Gerard said winning his first X Games Aspen medal was a dream come true.
“Really, it’s nuts.” Gerard said. “Honestly it’s been a dream as a kid to win an X Games medal. Just really happy I was able to land all four runs here today and psyched.”