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X Games Day 2 Notebook: Julia Marino injured, out of X games

Staff reports

SATURDAY’S SCHEDULE

9-10 a.m: Women’s ski slopestyle practice

11-11:45 a.m.: Women’s snowboard slopestyle final

11:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m.: Men’s snowboard big air practice

Noon-12:30 p.m.: Para snowbike cross final

12:30-1:15 p.m.: Men’s ski slopestyle final

1:15-1:45 p.m.: Adaptive snowbike cross final

1:45-2:30 p.m.: Men’s snowboard slopestyle final

2:30-3:30 p.m.: Snowboard rail jam practice at slopestyle

3-4 p.m.: Snowbike Cross semi/final

4:30 p.m.: Illenium concert

5:30-6:30 p.m.: Snowboard knuckle huck practice

6:30-7:30 p.m.: Women’s ski superpipe final

8-8:45 p.m.: Men’s snowboard big air final

8:45-9:45 p.m.: Women’s snowboard superpipe final

9:30 p.m.: Alesso concert

former slopestyle champ Julia Marino breaks wrist

ASPEN – Former X Games champion Julia Marino is out for this year’s competition, she wrote Friday on social media. The 2017 snowboard slopestyle champion from Connecticut broke her wrist ahead of the contests at Buttermilk, writing she “tried to ride through it but I think it needs a week or so. After watching the most insane ladies big air final in history last night I’m looking forward to watching the rest of my homies kill it in slope tomorrow.”

Marino is a seven-time X Games medalist. She only has that one gold, but does have three silver medals (two in big air, one in slopestyle) and three bronze medals, including last year at X Games Norway. She finished eighth in the 2019 slopestyle contest in Aspen.



The 2020 women’s snowboard slopestyle final is scheduled for 11 a.m. Saturday and will feature 16-time X Games medalist Jamie Anderson, three-time gold medalist Anna Gasser, former big air champ Hailey Langland and reigning slopestyle champion Zoi Sadowski-Synnott, among others.

Japan’s Miyabi Onitsuka won snowboard big air gold Thursday night. She’ll also compete in slopestyle.



– Austin Colbert

X Games rookie Stevenson tops ski slopestyle qualifiers

Hours after he stole the show to win gold in Thursday night’s inaugural ski knuckle huck competition, 20-year-old Colby Stevenson from Park City continued his unofficial campaign for X Games Aspen 2020 rookie of the year.

Stevenson finished on top of Friday’s men’s ski slopestyle elimination round, ahead of fellow qualifiers Andri Ragetti, Fabian Boesch, Nick Goepper and Evan McEachran.

In the 50-minute jam format featuring 16 skiers, Stevenson skied to the top spot early on with a line through the long, tight slopestyle course that featured rail technicality up top with a rightside 450 continuing on one feature followed by a pretzel 630 on the next one. Transitioning into the jumps portion of the course, Stevenson began with a switch double-cork with a neat stalefish grab before executing a switch right-side 1260. Stevenson’s biggest jump on the run was a 1440, which he followed up with a right-side down-the-pipe double-cork 720 on the tricky final jump on this year’s course: the shark-fin quarter-pipe side hit.

There was excitement toward the end of the contest as Indiana native and U.S. Olympic medalist Nick Goepper was on the wrong side of the bubble before his final run through the course. Goepper also laced a line down the slope despite suffering pain from a dislocated shoulder in practice earlier this week. Goepper proceeded to land a run punctuated with an inventive double flat-spin 900 on the shark fin to bump up into fourth.

“A couple days ago and I got the clear from the doc and if it’s not going to get any worse I might as well keep fighting,” Goepper said.

Then, one of the faces of this year’s X Games, Swedish freeski star Henrik Harlaut, fell on his final run when trying to land a double-cork 1260 switch to miss out on qualifying. Friday’s qualifiers will be joined in Saturday’s final (12:30 p.m., ABC) by auto-qualifiers Alex Hall, Alex Beaulieu-Marchand and Ferdinand Dahl.

– Antonio Olivero


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