Winter Olympics 2018: Team USA’s Jamie Anderson Defends Slope-Style Snowboarding Title In Pyeongchang [VIDEO]

by Pablo MenaFebruary 12, 2018, 1:54 pmDaily Digest, News, Z-Home Slider >

Jamie Anderson of Team USA is the gold medallist in the women’s slope-style snowboarding competition for the second consecutive Winter Olympics, after putting on an impressive performance in Pyeongchang on Monday morning.

Jamie Anderson Winter Olympics 2018 performance news

The 27-year-old Californian is now the first female snowboarder to win two Olympic golds, after she won in Sochi in 2014, and scored an 83.00 during the first of her two runs.

Sunday’s qualifying round of the event in South Korea was canceled due to high winds, although all 26 riders eventually advanced to the final round. There was a roughly 75-minute delay before the finals began.

“I took it one feature at a time and adapted with the weather,” said Anderson. “I felt strong wind as soon as I dropped in, but I knew I had to go with it. It’s not always going to be perfect.”

Laurie Blouin of Canada won silver, and Finland’s Enni Rukajarvi finished third.

U.S. snowboarding head coach Mike Jankowski praised Anderson for her performance despite the brutal conditions.

“Watching your competitors struggle in the wind can make it more difficult to be in the moment and confident,” he said. “This was a challenging day, but Jamie accepted that this was what was happening, kept her head in the game and put one down.”

Among Anderson’s impressive moves was adapting a cab 900 to a cab 540 while in midair. Jankowski is an avid windsurfer who has spent much time on the water and in the mountains. On Monday, he used visual cues like trees and then timed the wind gusts to determine how long it would take for them to travel from those spots to the jumps on the course.

“The other coaches held the riders in the start and waited for me to communicate that there was a lull in the wind before they dropped them,” Jankowski said. “For every big gust of wind, there’s a lull behind it. There’s a backside to the gusts. So we were timing the start so we would hit the lulls, and we were able to do that with quite a few of the riders. It’s not a perfect science, but that was huge for us.”

Anderson’s gold medal victory followed that of 17-year-old fellow slope-style snowboarder Red Gerard, who took home Team USA’s first gold medal in the men’s event on Sunday. Gerard made headlines when he cursed in awe following his big win.

“Holy f—!” yelled Gerard as he embraced his friends. NBC was unable to censor the young American in time.