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But not everyone in slopestyle snowboarding and skiing agrees that bigger jumps — being pushed for by the men eager to throw down riskier tricks — meas progress for women.
Sergei Grits / The Associated Press
Canada's Spencer O'Brien nails a jump during her snowboard slopestyle qualifying run at the Sochi Olympics on Thursday.
Snowboarder Spencer O’Brien is proud to be a woman competing in slopestyle, a new Olympic discipline where women tackle the same course as the men.
“Girls can’t hit from the same golf tee, or they have to play shorter tennis matches. It’s always been this attitude that girls are weaker and they need something easier. With action sports, it’s such a new breed of sport, it seems like those limitations aren’t put on women from the get-go,” said O’Brien, Canada’s top medal hope in this event where riders perform tricks down a slope full of rail features and jumps.
That’s why she was concerned that the Olympics — the pinnacle of any athletic discipline — would have small and large jump options on the slopestyle course.
They’re not called women’s jumps, but no guy would be caught dead using the small side that’s about three metres lower and closer to the landing area.
“I would be a little bit sad, after how far we’ve come in our sport and the world of sport in general, to see us take a step backwards,” the 26-year-old said, just before going to Sochi.
But after Thursday’s qualifiers, where she was third in her heat and heads straight to Sunday’s medal round, she’s not nearly as worried.
“I’m really impressed to see a large majority of the women’s field stepping up to (the big jumps). They’re challenging and they’re big . . . even the small ones aren’t small,” she said.
Still, she would like to see the end of the girl-sized jumps.
But not everyone in slopestyle snowboarding and skiing agrees that bigger jumps — being pushed for by the men eager to throw down riskier tricks — means progress for women.
“For women, the big jumps are a little too big,” said Sarka Pancochova, a snowboarder from the Czech Republic. “To do their best . . . smaller jumps are better.”
While the Olympics are meant to showcase the best in the world, they also have country quotas to provide broader global participation. This is still a relatively new sport, so not many nations have strong women’s slopestyle snowboarding and skiing teams.
That means the quality and experience in the field drops off significantly in the second half of the 24 contenders, said slopestyle skier Yuki Tsubota.
“There’s a really wide range of ability at the Olympics,” the 20-year-old from Whistler said. “It’s great to have the option, especially for safety.”
In some conditions, like sticky snow or heavy winds, it’s nearly impossible for the lighter women to even get enough speed to make it to a large jump’s landing zone, let alone feel confident about throwing their big tricks.
“We’re just not as aggressive or strong as the guys,” she said.
Dara Howell, a strong medal contender in ski slopestyle from Huntsville, Ont., agrees that small jumps “give girls opportunity.”
It’s just not one she needs.
“All of us are choosing the bigger side, at least for now,” she said of the strong Canadian women’s ski team, which includes multiple X-Games gold medallist Kaya Turski and Kim Lamarre.
The slopestyle skiers compete on Tuesday.
On the snowboard side, Jenna Blasman, a 20-year-old from Kitchener, Ont., has another chance to qualify for Sunday’s medal round through the semifinals.
Slopestyle for skiers and snowboarders is the latest disciple that the IOC has adopted from the X Games to give the Olympics a younger and hipper feel.
For O’Brien, that decision revived a childhood dream she thought she had to let go when she switched from halfpipe, an Olympic sport for snowboarders since 1998, to the newer discipline of slopestyle.
It finally hit her that she was at the Olympics when she was looking at the cheering crowd.
“‘I was so nervous, I felt like I was going to puke,” she said. “I hadn’t felt like I was at the Olympics until that moment.”
Patrick Chan shrugs off third place in team figure skating event at Sochi Olympics
Canada is second place overall behind Russia after the first day of the debut team event.
Paul Chiasson / THE CANADIAN PRESS
Canada's Patrick Chan competes in the men's portion of the figure skating team event at the Sochi Winter Olympics Thursday, February 6, 2014 in Sochi.
SOCHI, RUSSIA—They didn’t know what to make of it, this arriviste addition to the classic figure skating Olympic curriculum.
Patrick Chan could make no more of it than a third-place interim standing — sorta, in a matter of speaking, pending — which might set off alarm bells.
At that point we all reverted to: well, it’s an ersatz contrivance anyway, not the real thing, or precisely what the Canadians were not saying 24 hours earlier, when the inaugural team event seemed totally cool, a medals canapé party-mix, maybe even slam-dunk gold.
Then Evgeny Plushenko came along, out of mothballs, and skated golden oldie divine for the home squad. And Japanese teenager Yuzuru Hanyu was just about flawless in extending his recent dominance over Chan, whilst making fan-boy gurgle sounds about sharing the ice with his childhood hero, the aforementioned Plushenko.
And suddenly the team competition — bracketed around Friday’s Opening Ceremonies — had lost much of its jiggy (or junkie) appeal.
But, no, wait for it. Because Canadian pairs team Meagan Duhamel and Eric Radford tootled up next and unspooled a season-best score — maybe career-best competitive performance — in their short program offering, putting Canada second only to reigning world champions Tatiana Volosozhar and Maxim Trankov of Russia. And just as suddenly, the team event didn’t sound so eye-rolling dinky anymore.
In fact, once the evening of skating was over — men’s and pairs done, halfway through the marathon — Canada was sitting second in the interim rankings with 17 points, two points behind front-leading Russia, two points ahead of China.
Factoid: Not a damn thing was actually decided here Thursday evening and it mattered not a great deal that Chan stepped out of a triple Axel, wasn’t even in the same column as his rivals: 89.81, compared to Hanyu’s 97.98 and Plushenko’s 91.39.
Interim rankings — ordinals — for the 10 countries involved extend through Saturday because that’s how long it will take to conclude the short program phase of the competition, with women and ice dancers still on tap. Five nations advance to the long program finals, based on the cumulative score of all participants. Some, such as Chan, will not participate in the free, handing off to teammate Kevin Reynolds.
A bit awkward that, Chan admitted afterwards, rather like passing the baton in a relay race. (Relay figure skating: now there’s a thought for the always anxious to bloat-and-expand International Olympic Committee.)
“A little bit. But it also feels good to be able to hand it off,” said Chan, following his 89.71 acquittal of Elegie in E Flat Minor by Rachmaninov. He’d been the canary in the mineshaft, for teammates, as first out of the chute, now packed up and done for this cocktail event.
“Kind of show the other teammates that it can be done. I was the first one out and I’m alive after it so there’s nothing to be scared of.
“I’m glad to lead the team in that aspect, being the first one to go out for the team. Right now I’m happy to hand it off.”
In fact, behind the scenes, Chan had mimed passing the baton to teammate Radford because all skaters run their laps in this event, regardless of discipline.
“I was backstage with Patrick and he kind of shook my hand, said, ‘okay, I’m passing the baton on to you guys.’ So we’re in a kind of relay.”
The interdependence show most especially in the kiss ‘n’ cry area where the skaters who’ve just competed are surrounded by their teammates as they await the scores. This is all very unconventional.
“The whole sense of team, we don’t really have that in figure skating,” said Radford. “It adds a whole new dimension to the experience.”
Their mark was 73.10 — a “maxed out technical performance,” as Duhamel noted. A full 10 points behind the Russians but nobody else in between.
“It’s going to going to give us confidence for our short program next week,” Duhamel vowed.
They been twitchy with nerves waiting along the boards in the final flight of skaters, in the company of the Russian duo, deafened by the crowd’s roar when those names were announced. “As soon as we stepped out on the ice, we made it about ourselves,” Radford explain.
Once they’d executed a huge opening triple twist lift, they both knew they were on, peaking, utterly confident moving into the side-by-side triple Lutz, everything afterwards falling into place. At one point, during the foot sequence, Duhamel looked down and noticed the Olympic rings on the ice under her feet, though to herself: “Wow. We’re really doing this — at the Olympics.”
At the end, Duhamel grabbed her cheeks in joy.
“It was the greatest feeling ever. Not the points, not the winning, not Canada winning a medal – just finishing our program with that feeling we had, at the Olympics, that’s an athlete’s dream come true. And we just did it. We lived the ultimate moment. So the Olympics is a success for else no matter what happens next.”
What happens next, at least in this event, won’t include Chan, who prepares now for the singles competition.
He did his part, for T-E-A-M, now will move on and skate for C-H-A-N.
His opening quad-double was impressive but the Axel went awry, even as he hung on with the double-foot landing.
“At the end of the day, honest, I haven’t enjoyed skating that program this much in a long time.
“I got off the ice, saw the scores, and told myself, hey, this is a great chance to get those jitters out. There was a feeling of, wooh, that hesitation, because I wanted to be so perfect. I know there’s a lot of people watching me and I feel like the centre of attention. So, all those little things crept into my mind.”
It was what many of the skaters had earlier professed the team event would not be – a dress rehearsal for their individual competitions.
“There was a bit of nonchalance,” Chan admitted. “I spoke to the German ice dancer right before my six-minute warm-up and that was really weird.”
Men’s singles and ice dancers never run into each other during a competition. They’re breeds apart.
“It was a very relaxed environment,” Chan added. “Maybe that’s why I was able to enjoy it a little bit more, even though I made a little mistake.”
But the prep skate did serve a further purpose in highlighting changes he will need to incorporate for his next short program — like changing the entry build-up into his triple Axel so there’s more speed going into that nemesis jump.
Chan did not see Plushenko skate. He was in the warm-up area, ear buds in, listening to his music, and “trying to get into my own world as opposed to someone else’s word.”
He certainly noticed the Russian’s score later, during the on-ice warm-up.
“Ninety-one is good,” Chan shrugged. “But I’ve seen him score that before. It’s nothing special. Yuzuru was 97? Those are all scores I’ve seen before.
“I’m not concerned with that.”
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