Alex Hall let out a whoop when he landed his last trick on the slopestyle course, and that was before the judges awarded him with what would be the winning score. It was, he said later, the best run of his life.
“Oh, I was stoked,” he said. “I couldn’t believe I just landed that.”
Hall was one of three Americans looking to crowd the medal stand at the men’s freestyle skiing slopestyle event, hoping that a European-centric field would not disrupt those plans.
Two of them did it: Hall won gold and Nick Goepper took silver on another sunny, below-zero day at Genting Snow Park.