Jasey-Jay finally gets his dayThe men's PGS was the final event of the 2010 Winter Olympic Games held at Cypress Mountain, and the track was showing it today. Friday's weather was tough on the women, and life got worse on Saturday for the men, who were battling similar conditions. As for the most notable moments?  1. The Local Hero: The Canadian crowd really didn't have a whole lot to cheer about early on, given that they could barely see the finish line due to the horrible conditions (even from where they were sitting). But they came out in force to give Jasey-Jay Anderson the sendoff he's worthy of. This was Anderson's fourth and final trip to the Olympics (the 34-year-old racer promised this would be his last Games even before they started). More importantly, this was his last shot at getting a medal. So for him to grind out a win and deliver a gold medal for his country under that kind of pressure speaks volumes about this guy's character. Anderson's surprise story is welcome news in Canada. 2. The American Inspiration: American Chris Klug, whose first Olympic experience came in 1998. Klug made it back to the Olympics in 2002, but only after enduring a liver transplant. According to Olympic officials, he was the first person in the history of the Games to have gone through such an ordeal and competed. He ended up bringing home a bronze medal that year ... but that was just his first comeback story. In many ways, his 2010 trip to the Olympics has been equally inspiring, especially after he failed to make the U.S. Team in 2006. As we've learned with Klug, you can never count him out. His performance today was a solid one. He finished his two qualifying runs with a time of 38.84. Klug would go on to make it all the way to the quarterfinal, where he had a bad spinout on his first run. That mistake ended up costing him. He couldn't make up the time on the next run against Zan Kosir, who, by the way, is 12 years younger than Klug. Nevertheless, Klug's 7th-place finish was a very respectable one. 3. The Breaking Point: Though officials were trying to claim the run was better on Saturday than it was on Friday, Austria's Siegfried Grabner would probably disagree. Grabner spun out and crashed into the fence during his race against Canadian Matthew Morison. He broke his board in the process. The rain was coming down a lot harder on Saturday, compounding the rest of the weather problems, like low visibility, bad light, ruts all over the course and soup for snow. 4. The Blind Spot: There's nothing worse -- or more dangerous -- in PGS than low visibility. Cypress Mountain, for whatever reason, is a magnet for fog. Midway through the competition today there was a giant blanket sitting right in the middle of the course. It made life extremely difficult for the racers. Though they instinctively know where the gates are, having a good visual of where you're headed is essential to mapping out turns properly. The guys who got the worst of those conditions absolutely suffered, since it had a pretty significant impact on the lines they were choosing. 5. The Final Stand: Jasey-Jay Anderson and Chris Klug were the lone racers from North America to finish in the top 10. Both are likely to retire as of Saturday afternoon, which will put the pressure on the 33-year-old American Tyler Jewell to carry the torch in Russia. As we mentioned with the women on Friday, the Europeans dominate the larger PGS snowboarding field, which is one more reason why Anderson's win was such a huge upset, and big surprise. It could be a very long time before we see a North American at the top of a PGS podium again. Caption: Jasey-Jay Anderson holding the medal he's been striving for since 1998. Photo: Livesey via Getty Images. Channels: Snow Europeans take ownership of the Top 10 in women's PGSThough the women's parallel giant slalom was marred by rough weather and tricky riding conditions today, the competition was as fierce as ever. As is usual with racing, the tiniest of errors separated winners from losers. But in the world of snowboard racing, there are always several factors at play...  1. It's a cultural thing: While U.S. snowboarders are the dominant players in the halfpipe and park events like slopestyle these days, they surrendered their racing dominance to the Europeans years ago. Giant slalom is the grandfather of snowboarding -- the first event conjured up by those who wanted to bring snowboarding into the competitive fold. Snowboarding has evolved tremendously since 1998, but the traditional racing still has a huge fan base in Europe. So it really shouldn't be considered a surprise that the final top 10 finishers on Friday consisted of Germans (3) Austrians (4) Russians (2) and the lone Netherlands rider, Nicolien Sauerbreij, who won the gold. 2.Team USA: Michelle Gorgone was the only American competing in today's action. She was in solid shape after her first qualifying run, with one of the fastest morning runs of the day. At that point she looked like a medal contender, but she was one of the rare racers to have her biggest problems on the red course. During her second run she made two pretty big errors at the top and ended up qualifying in the 13th slot for the final. Ultimately, Gorgone was undone by Ekaterina llyukhina of Russia, who finished with a silver medal. "At one point coming over the pitch I thought I had her," she said to the NBC reporter. "But I made a mistake and that was the end of my day... party time." 3.A sticky situation: The weather wreaked havoc on competitors and fans Friday. Pouring rain, mushy snow and huge visibility problems were major obstacles -- mental and physical -- for the competitors. And it could be argued that the chair rides up were even worse than the speed rides down, since riders were exposed to the elements the whole time. Only the mentally tough survive this kind of event. Nicolein Saurbreij of the Netherlands had to race 10 times today to capture her gold medal. She handled it like a champion, too. She and Ekaterina llyukhina of Russia were only separated by a .02 differential after their first run. Riders in PGS go head-to-head twice in each of the final rounds. They swap courses between runs, and the gates open based on the time differential of the first run. 4.Edge wise: The blue course was giving a lot of the women problems Friday, especially at the top. That's something the men, who compete on Saturday, will be taking note of. Competitors like Selina Joerg were fighting with their edges up there. Tough conditions are harder to handle on a snowboard than skis. With both feet fixed to a single ski with only two edges, your corrective options are extremely limited. In ski racing you'll see one ski go inactive for a brief period of time while the other ski does all the work. Or you'll see two edges pitching in to accomplish the same goal. On a snowboard, all of a rider's eggs are on one edge at a time. The extra edge is also what gives skiers faster speeds. 5.The chopping block?: There' s been a lot of speculation about whether or not PGS snowboarding will actually be around when the Olympics arrive in Russia in four years. Given that llyukhina finished with a silver medal, and Ekaterina Tudegesheva performed well, the Russians may be lobbying to keep it if they think it will beef up their medal count. But the larger snowboarding world would probably like to see the slopestyle competition -- a freestyle competition with jump features and rail features -- make its way into the Olympic fold. Slopestyle has a huge fan base thanks in part to the X Games. But the IOC is always a little hesitant to add sports that require more judges. Racing is clean. There's a clear winner and loser. Sports that require interpretation are ripe for conflict. Above: Nicolien Sauerbreij of the Netherland's rounds the corner en route to her gold medal performance in Friday's women's PGS event. Photo: Squire via Getty Images Channels: Snow Torah takes gold, but no double after first-round troubleDouble trouble: Speculation about whether Torah Bright would deliver on the double cork Thursday ended when she fell on her first run. Had she been in first place after her first run, the way the Shaun White was Wednesday night, there's little doubt she would have tried it. After she fell, it was all about whether the rest of her repertoire was strong enough to fend off Kelly Clark and Gretchen Bleiler. The move she fell on is a technical combination called a backside Photo: Livesey via Getty Images Channels: Snow A big night for WhiteWednesday night was another step forward for Olympic snowboarding. The men's halfpipe competition elevated the sport to another level thanks to Shaun White. But White wasn't alone when it came to impressing. Here's five things that stood out to me:  1. The ultimate time stamp: By landing the Double McTwist 1260 on the final move of his final run in Vancouver, White put a nice mark on the level of performance that halfpipe snowboarding has hit at the 2010 Games. He didn't have to do it. But I'm glad he did because it's nice when a new benchmark is set on the biggest, brightest stage there is. When you're getting 5 feet farther out of the pipe than the rest of the field, it's impossible not to stand out above the rest. Shaun proved Wednesday that he remains in his own league. 2. Two out of three isn't bad: Coming into this season, the U.S. had a decent shot at sweeping in Vancouver, but those chances were hurt when Kevin Pearce and Danny Davis went down to injuries last month. Both were huge favorites to make the team. That the U.S. managed to take two of the three spots on the podium without them is a huge accomplishment, and I was happy that it was Scotty Lago, a close friend of Pearce and Davis, who ended up there with White. 3. The big hustle: Halfpipe riding is a lot like knowing how to work a pool hall. You really don't want to let the cat out of the bag while you're trying to lure somebody into a trap. In practice earlier this week guys were holding back -- not just to stay healthy -- but to keep any last minute secrets under wraps. But Wednesday the level of riding went through the roof -- much higher than I expected. It was night and day from practice, so I guess you can say they had me fooled.  4. The pond is growing: Kazuhiro "Kazu" Kokubo finished in 8th place, but his effort and performance was medal worthy. He put on a fantastic show for the crowd with his chicken-wing McTwist. Unfortunately, he fell on his last move during both final runs that were otherwise perfect. Meanwhile, Peetu Piiroinen of Finland proved he's one of the most stylish and dynamic riders out there. But what really surprised me was the young Chinese riders. None of them made the final but they did show they're serious about snowboarding, and there's no telling what that means for the Winter Olympics of 2014. There's a lot of snow in China, and I hear they're recruiting kids into snowboarding from gymnastics, ala Louie Vito. 5. This must be the front row: There were a lot of people spending a lot of time stressing on the condition of the halfpipe coming into Wednesday. The amount of care and work that went into maintaining conditions at Cypress is a ringing endorsement of just how far snowboarding has come in its 12 years as an Olympic sport. I was there in Nagano in 1998, and there wasn't a lot of concern when our pipe was melting in the pouring rain. To see snowboarding be center stage under the bright lights of prime time during the world's biggest sporting event is something I thought never possible. But guys like Shaun White take their sports to new heights. Luckily, there's no sign of him slowing down. Channels: Snow The ugly, the bad, and the best of women's snowboardcrossTuesday was a brutal one for the women of snowboardcross. Bad weather and a nasty looking course didn't make anything easy on them, but it did make for an exciting competition. These were the five things that stood out to me...  1.What went wrong with Lindsey Jacobellis: Tuesday's mistake was nothing like her blunder at the 2006 Olympics. That one was bone-headed. Back then she lost doing a completely unnecessary move within view of the finish line. This was nothing of the sort. It's hard to say she did anything wrong Tuesday. Lindsey is strongest on the flat features: the jumps, doubles and step offs are where she gains ground on her competitors. And she was handling all of them well early on. But the mistake she made was going a little too big on a jump that feeds directly into a heavy turn. She had an off-balance landing that required corrective action. She overcorrected and went sliding into the gate. Vancouver Games over. 2.It's ugly out there: While Lindsey's latest incident is another reminder of just how cutthroat life is in snowboardcross, a lot of the women competing there Tuesday will be wearing the black and blue evidence. The course at Cypress was brutalizing them, especially when the fog made visibility a problem. Just getting to the bottom of the run was an issue for half the competitors. Canada's Dominique Maltais, who won a bronze in Turin, didn't get past the qualifying round. Callan Chythlook-Sifsof had to walk off the course twice. That's brutal. 3.Second chances: Missed opportunities are what make the Olympics so harsh -- and so exciting. The reason the Lindsey Jacobellis' saga is so compelling is we all know those opportunities don't come often. It stings even more now. But on the flip side, Maelle Ricker was extremely lucky. Weather delays nearly cost her a shot at gold, because she wiped out on her first run in the qualifier. For a time, officials were considering canceling the second round of qualifying runs, which would have sent her packing. But Tuesday Maelle was lucky and good. Obviously, she made the most of her second shot.  4. Fair warning: Swiss riders Olivia Nobs and Mellie Francon really impressed me. I think the European riders are really starting to step up in snowboardcross, which is great to see. Deborah Anthonioz and Nelly Moenne Loccoz of France were also excellent. 5.Home field advantage: The last few times the Olympics have been in Canada there's really been no such thing. That's why the Canadians go absolutely nuts when somebody from their country actually wins. The Canadians have put a huge emphasis on owning the medal stand after getting blanked on golds for decades. Vancouver's hometown girl, Maelle Ricker, played the challenging conditions of the course well after her opening round stumble. She should have. The Canadians had use of a training course built by the same guy who designed the Olympic one. Channels: Snow |
360 to a switch backside 720. Most of the best guys would have issues pulling that move down and she did it with style on her second run. It was pretty obvious at that point that Torah 