{"id":802325,"date":"2019-12-14T17:53:19","date_gmt":"2019-12-15T00:53:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.summitdaily.com\/?p=376011"},"modified":"2019-12-14T17:53:19","modified_gmt":"2019-12-15T00:53:19","slug":"scotty-james-bests-yuto-totsuka-in-weather-affected-grand-prix-snowboard-final","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/ksmt\/local-news\/scotty-james-bests-yuto-totsuka-in-weather-affected-grand-prix-snowboard-final\/","title":{"rendered":"Scotty James bests Yuto Totsuka in weather-affected Grand Prix snowboard final"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Pumping his fist in the air, Australian Scotty James scores a 96.00 on his first run of the snowboarding halfpipe finals at the Land Rover U.S. Grand Prix at Copper Mountain, Colo. on Saturday, Dec. 14. For the third year in a row, James placed first in the competition.<\/strong>
Liz Copan \/ ecopan@summitdaily.com<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

COPPER MOUNTAIN \u2013 Inside the cozy confines of the Copper Mountain Resort Conference Center while a snowstorm continued to brew outside, Maddie Mastro put it perfectly in the post-competition press conference at Saturday\u2019s Land Rover U.S. Grand Prix.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt wasn\u2019t my day, I guess,\u201d the 2019 Burton U.S. Open champion said. \u201cMother Nature was a bit angry at me. That\u2019s OK.\u201d<\/p>\n

What Mastro was referring to was the torrid, gusty snow squall that blew into the 22-foot Woodward Copper superpipe right before she was set to drop in for her third and final run. Sitting in third place, Mastro \u2014 the favorite heading into the competition \u2014 needed to improve her score to an 87.75 or better to top eventual women\u2019s snowboard winner Queralt Castellet of Spain.<\/p>\n

But the conditions Mastro was staring at through her goggles was blowing snow engulfing the 540-foot-long superpipe \u2014 so much snow that those at the bottom couldn\u2019t see past halfway up the pipe and Mastro couldn\u2019t see very far down it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was like, \u2018holy cow, this is windy. This is a lot of snow.’\u201d Mastro recalled of her thoughts at the top of the pipe. \u201cSo I was just trying to stay in the right mindset to drop in when it did clear.\u201d<\/p>\n

The event officials at Copper Mountain Resort moved the competition to a weather hold \u2014 as Bob Dylan\u2019s \u201cBlowin\u2019 In the Wind\u201d and The Doors\u2019 \u201cRiders on the Storm\u201d played over the speaker system \u2014 until conditions improved. About 15 minutes later, though snow was still falling in clumps at Copper, the wind died down enough for officials to deem Mastro\u2019s drop in to the pipe as safe. Mastro dropped into the pipe and attempted a trick on each wall of the pipe before calling it a day.<\/p>\n

Mastro finished third behind Castellet and runner-up Jiayu Liu of China (80.00) to a large degree because she had the misfortune of dropping into the pipe when the wind and snow kicked up. It\u2019s not normally the case the top qualifier for finals has a disadvantage by dropping in last, but it was the case Saturday.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was hoping to put down the run that I wanted,\u201d Mastro said. \u201cObviously that didn\u2019t happen, weather effected it. But I definitely had a run that I wanted to put down and tricks I wanted to do. But it wasn\u2019t my day, I guess, for that.\u201d<\/p>\n

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