The X Games men’s slopestyle was an all-time throwdown

The field was stacked, the course looked amazing, and the bluebird weather promised a fun event. After a couple of years of experimenting with judging, it was great to see the good old points and the best run counts system make a comeback. Maybe someone was actually listening to the hate we’ve been giving over the past few years.

The first run didn’t work out very well for everyone except for Andri Ragettli—who stomped both ways 450s on and a right double cork 1440, left double cork 1620 and switch dub misty 16—and Jesper Tjader, who had a similar rail section and two bringbacks in the booters, with a double misty 1080 to 900 and switch double 900 to 720. Jesper scored 90 and Andri 93, and this point Andri seemed like a solid bet for the podium. But little did we know…

The second run was more enjoyable to watch. The OG Henrik Harlaut stomped a clean run, not enough to podium, but a super sick one considering we haven’t seen him compete in slopestyle for a very long time. Ferdinand Dahl crashed on a carved triple 16 that we haven’t seen from him for a long time, and Andri stomped everything again and even added a switch dub misty 18 on the money booter, which added him an extra third of a point.

Last year’s silver medalist Mac Forehand went to the moon and finished his run with a triple 18 mute, scoring 95.33 points. Birk Ruud’s skiing looked totally different than at yesterday’s big air. His technical run was rewarded with 96.33 points and put him in the lead. Colby Stevenson was super creative yet technical on the rails and had great overall flow, finishing the run with a nose butter dub 16, but his run scored “only” 94.33, putting him in a provisional third place.

The third and final run started and we witnessed Alex Hall’s feeling for the rails and the terrain. Probably the most technical jib run of the day, full of switch-ups and pretzels and a switch unnatural dub 12 bringback to 10. The judges rewarded it with 96 points, putting A-Hall in second place, even though the safety grab was a bit of a boot grab. No one else stepped up their game, so that was the end: Birk in first, A-Hall second and Mac third.

Shoutout to every one of the skiers, the level was insane. You could easily argue that any of the top six boys (92 points +) could have been on the podium, all of them had such banger runs.