Tess Ledeux claims her fourth X Games Big Air gold

As we described in the Men’s Big Air article, there was a new judging system in place this year in Aspen. The riders needed to perform three tricks: one stylish and two technical ones. That brought a new flavor to the table as we were able to enjoy some very different tricks than you’ll see any other Big Air competitions. Anastasia Tatalina sent a cork 900 cuban for 8 points out of 10, Mathilde Gremaud carved a huge cork 540 lead blunt that scored 9 points, and Tess Ledeux stomped a beautiful rodeo 7 with a perfect double japan and earned a perfect 10 points.

There is just one really sketchy thing about the new judging criteria: If you mess up the stylish run, you don’t get a second chance, so it’s better to play it safe. It would definitely be better to have more tries to see more creativity.

The remaining runs were dedicated to the hunt for two technical tricks that needed to be performed in different directions. In the first tech run, both Anastasia and Sandra Eie stomped left double cork 1260s with proper mute grabs, with both scoring both 36 out of a possible 45 points. Rell Harwood landed a switch bio 1080 safety, while Tess tossed a double cork 1620 safety like it was nothing for 41 points. In the third run, she added a switch dub 1440 safety to secure her already massive lead.

Anastasia mirrored her dub 12 mute to move into second place and nearly landed a dub 14, but even that wouldn’t have been enough to beat Tess, who was just way too good this evening. Rell Harwood stomped two beautiful dub 12s, one of them even with a reverse mute, to secure the bronze medal.

Tess’s biggest rival Mathilde unfortunately wasn’t able to stick any of her tries at a double cork 16 lead blunt. Sandra Eie had some gnarly crashes on her unnatural dub corks as well, but fortunately she seemed unhurt. Ruby Star Andrews did a solid switch 10 safety but struggled with speed on her forward tricks.

Well done ladies, that was a fun contest to watch!