ZHANGJIAKOU, China – The Olympic freeski halfpipe was kind to the Americans again, even if the weather wasn’t.
David Wise and Alex Ferreira are again going home with medals from the Games, finishing second and third.
Four years ago, they took the top two spots, respectively, as Wise won his second Olympic gold in the event.
At the Beijing Games, skiers battled windy and cold conditions in the pipe.
“It’s gnarly,” said American Aaron Blunck, the top qualifier, after struggling with his landings on his first run.
New Zealand's Nico Porteous, 20, won gold. He was the bronze medalist in the event in 2018.
Wise and Ferreira found themselves back on the podium after landing difficult tricks, even if the conditions prevented them from doing more.
On his first run, Wise spun in all four directions – left, right, switch (or backward) left and switch right. He capped his run with back-to-back double cork 1260s, doing two off axis flips with 3 ½ spins each time.
Ferreira, meanwhile, did four double corks in a row in his run, the biggest of which was a 1440 or four rotations.
Wise, 31, won the first two Olympic gold medals in the event’s history. A little more than a year after winning the 2018 Games, Wise broke his femur in Austria. He returned to skis about eight months after surgery to insert a rod along his bone, but his return to top form has taken longer.
In January, he needed the final qualifier to make the U.S. team but returned to the X Games podium for the first time in three years by the end of the month.
He won in Pyeongchang thanks to double corks – or two-axis flips with varying degrees of rotation – spun in all four directions. Since breaking his femur, his switch version of the trick remained elusive.
Ferreira, 27, said his skiing got stagnant after claiming a silver medal in 2018. Coming down from the Olympics left him in a lull, and in the seasons after he didn’t feel motivated to progress his skiing.
But seeing Porteous learn to do double cork 1620s motivated him over the past year.
Ferreira came into the Games ranked second in the halfpipe this season, with three world cup podiums.
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Blunck, 25, finished seventh, the same place he finished in both of his previous Olympics. He first made the team in 2014 as a 17-year-old.
A two-time world champion, Blunck recovered from a broken pelvis in a training accident in Switzerland in October 2020 to make these Games.
The only Olympic rookie on the team, Birk Irving qualified third into the final, where he finished fifth. The 22-year-old had a breakout season in 2021, winning bronze medals at the world championships and the X Games.
He won gold in the halfpipe at the Youth Olympic Games in 2016.
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