Zoi Sadowski-Synnott claims ninth X-Games medal

By Christopher Reive

Zoi Sadowski-Synnott claimed her ninth X-Games medal, taking home silver in the big air competition in Aspen on Sunday.

After claiming gold in the slopestyle competition on Saturday, the 21-year-old added to her quickly growing collection of accolades, finishing second to Japan’s Reira Iwabuchi. Iwabuchi became the first woman to land a triple cab underflip - three and a half rotations while flipping backwards - in a competition to pip Sadowski-Synnott by one point, with the pair scoring 87 and 86 respectively.

Canadian Laurie Blouin took the bronze medal, also landing a triple cab underflip in her final run to earn a score of 48 – the highest single-scoring ride of the contest - and finish with an overall score of 82.

“I’m pretty stoked to come second with a field that strong and tricks going down that big,” Sadowski-Synnott told Newstalk ZB after the event.

“The most progressive women’s big air in history; two cab triple corks, a frontside triple cork and I did a switch backside 1260 for the first time … it was really inspiring to be a part of it. Watching all those girls throw down really fired me up to put down the tricks that I set out to.

It came down to the final jump for Sadowski-Synnott, who needed to find two points to take the gold. With a 44 on her lefthand trick, a switch backside 1260 (3.5 rotations) and a 42 on her right – a backside 1260 - numbers indicated she would try to improve the lower score.

That caused momentary confusion on the broadcast as she was given a 44 for her final trick, but she had gone into the trick riding switch, and only equalled her top mark for her lefthand trick.

The last of eight athletes to get onto the snow, Sadowski-Synnott eased her way into the contest, getting a feel for the conditions and landing a switch backside 900 (2.5 rotations). That gave her a starting score of 27, which she quickly improved with her next run, adding an extra rotation to the trick and being rewarded with a 44.

She followed the same pattern when posting scores on her righthand side, first landing a backside 900 for a score of 34, before again adding the extra rotation for a score of 42.

The young Kiwi was in a bid to become the first back-to-back double gold medalist in women’s X-Games history, after claiming the top spot in both slopestyle and big air last year.

“I had put the two tricks down that I had set out to do,” she said. “The only thing I had left was to try and clean up one of my tricks. I did the switch (backside 1260) and was hoping going bigger and grabbing longer would’ve bumped me up by a point or two.

“Defending that double gold would’ve been insane, but I completely respect ad am humbled and honoured to come second behind Reira.”

This article was first published on nzherald.co.nz and is republished here with permission