Women's slopestyle opened Saturday's proceedings at X Games and in stark contrast to Big Air yesterday, the weather was glorious. The course was running well and it showed, the ladies were absolutely killing it. Unfortunately, X Games stuck with the incomprehensible lack of scoring that definitely makes no sense to an average viewer. It seemed, essentially, to still be best-run counts and the winner was clear enough. Beyond that, scoring would have been nice to make sense of the narrowly missed grabs and backseat landings that ultimately decide results these days. Much worse however, was the Jeep advertising, especially because it meant missing Mathilde's best run of the day (eventual second place)...
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Right from the first run of the day, we saw dubs galore and there was a definite step up in the rail game across the board. Kirsty Muir was opening her run with a 4 on and all the ladies putting it down through the rail section. The strange exception in run one was Kelly Sildaru who caught an edge on a back 3 swap, which ultimately ended her competition.
Tess Ledeux took the early lead (though she was briefly overtaken by Johanne Killi at the beginning of run 2) and just built from there. Her second run was pretty close to perfect with a dope switch 2 gap blind 2, a textbook dub 12 on the bottom jump. With two runs to go, she looked hard to beat. Mathilde Gremaud showed she had the makings of a winning run, with a dub 10 on the first of three jumps but couldn't quite keep it clean.
Run three saw Johanne Killi shuffle a switch left 10 blunt followed by the opposite switch dub 10 japan. The shuffle killed the score but the run was there. Tess then improved her run yet again (we think), the highlight this time being the dope blind 4 safety out of the third rail feature (and again, the perfect 12 mute). Mathilde Gremaud was first to put down two dubs in her run but kinda missed the grab on her switch dub 10. She bumped Johanne Killi down to third but we're not quite sure why.
The final run saw Johanne Killi come up short again on the switch 10, this time going down entirely. Tess finally made a mistake, on the blind 4 safety, leaving the door open for someone to steal top spot. Maggie Voisin just didn't have her day today and couldn't put down a clean run. Mathilde gave it her best shot but overrotated her switch dub 10 after a run that could have challenged for top spot on the podium. Last to drop, Megan Oldham also sent it for the win, with a switch dub 9 into dub 12 combo on the bottom two features. She looked to have missed the grab on the switch dub 9 but it was still good enough for third. That left Tess Ledeux on top of the podium again, and the first woman to win Big Air and Slope in the same year.
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Results:
1) Tess Ledeux
2) Mathilde Gremaud
3) Megan Oldham
4) Johanne Killi
5) Kirsty Muir
6) Maggie Voisin
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Highlights:
Megan Oldham
https://www.newschoolers.com/videos/watch/1028057/Megan-m4v
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Mathilde Gremaud
https://www.newschoolers.com/videos/watch/1028058/Mathilde-m4v
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Tess Ledeux
https://www.newschoolers.com/videos/watch/1028060/Tess-m4v
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Full replay (use US VPN if you're outside the US):
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