Jamie Anderson Wins 7th Burton US Open Slopestyle Competition in Vail
Originally posted March 4, 2016, Vail Daily.
Jamie Anderson flies over the Golden Peak slopestyle course on Friday performing a indy grab en route to her seventh Burton U.S. Open Snowboarding Championships slopestyle victory.
VAIL – Jamie Anderson reasserted her dominance in women’s slopestyle snowboarding Friday by winning the Burton U.S. Open Snowboarding Championships with ease.
In a straight-final format, where each of the 16 semifinal competitors were given two attempts at a winning run, Anderson completed that winning run on her first attempt, performing two 540-degree spins and a 720 off the jumps on the Golden Peak course. It was a relief for the seven-time U.S. Open winner who just last weekend smacked her face down hard on a big air jump in Oslo, Norway, and is coming off a tough month of travel.
“It was fun, but definitely hectic, I think all of us are pretty beat up,” Anderson said after the competition. “The jumps were pretty massive.”
Wednesday’s semifinals were canceled due to snowy conditions on course. A testament to just how big the jumps are, Anderson said the snow wasn’t even slowing things down enough to prevent the course from being rideable.
“It was a whiteout blizzard and we still had speed to be able to hit the jumps,” she said.
Anderson said the course took some figuring out, with two sections of rails containing several options of flat-to-down slanted and rainbow rails, two sections of transition jumps with a 13-foot mini pipe feature and a 55-foot jump with side hit options. The final two jumps measured in at 65 and 75 feet from takeoff to landing. She took two practice days with 15 to 20 runs each day.
“I’m sure if all of us could ride it for a week and get comfy on it it would be a totally different ballpark of riding,” she said.
The U.S. Open follows an intense couple of months of competition for Friday’s podium finishers, which also included American Karly Shorr in second and Cheryl Maas of the Netherlands in third. The competitors were in Korea for the 2018 Olympics slopestyle test event Feb, 21, which Anderson won. The following weekend they were in Norway for the European X Games big air contest, which Maas won. They’ll hang around Vail Saturday before taking off for the FIS Snowboarding World Championships in China.
“We leave on Sunday, so we get one day off,” Anderson said. “We’ll be able to celebrate in the halfpipe though, hopefully try to poach a couple of runs.”
Saturday’s Burton U.S. Open halfpipe competition begins at 10 a.m. on Saturday with Chloe Kim trying to make it five straight halfpipe wins. Shaun White and the men follow starting at 12:30 p.m.
O’BRIEN BANGED UP, OK
Following the competition, Anderson thanked Maas for her contributions to snowboarding over the Dutch veteran’s long career in the sport. Maas, a mother of two, landed a 900 off the final jump on Friday to secure her spot on the podium.
“Watching you ride in Oslo and watching you push the level and doing all these crazy new tricks … always motivates me to get better,” Anderson told Maas after the competition.
Earning X Games gold last weekend and a podium here on Friday, Maas told reporter Henry Jackson her motivation to keep going comes from her love of snowboarding.
“It gives me such a pleasure and a thrill,” Maas said. “There’s great people around in this scene, so I don’t want to quit.”
Maas wasn’t the only competitor to outperform the dominant Anderson recently. At the X Games in Aspen in January, Canadian slopestyle rider Spencer O’Brien rode away with the win. On Friday, O’Brien went down hard in her first run, laying motionless on the course for a scary amount of time.
“I knocked the wind out of myself pretty good,” O’Brien told reporter Jack Mitrani between runs. “I stretched the nerve plates underneath my muscles … so I had some crazy sensations going down through my arms and I couldn’t really lift them.”
Courageous as ever, O’Brien got back out for her second run.
“It’s always a challenge to jump ahead of Jamie,” O’Brien said. “She’s such a talented rider and she put down a great run.”
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