
Olympian Chris Corning came through on the jibs section of the men’s snowboarding slopestyle final at the Dew Tour in Breckenridge, Colorado, to win the silver medal as the event wrapped up on Sunday.
The slopestyle competition at the Dew Tour this year separated the jumps from the jibs, or rails, to create two scoring sections. Corning sat in fourth place following the jumps section after putting together three solid runs but none high-scoring enough to put him in podium position.
Instead it was Japan’s Takeru Otsuka, 17, who scored a near-perfect 98.00 to take the lead into the jib segment, followed by countryman Yuki Kadono with a 93.00 and Norway’s Stale Sandbech at 91.33.
Corning had a top score of 89.00 on his third and final run of the jumps to move into jibs just off of the podium.
The reigning men’s world cup slopestyle champion quickly made up ground with his first run of the jibs, however, scoring a 91.00 that would lift him past everyone into first place in the overall standings.
While Otsuka and Kadono couldn’t match their success from the jumps, Sandbech put together one of the best jib runs of the day on his third and final run to score a 90 and move into first place overall with a score of 181.33
Corning had one last chance to improve his score and, although he performed a strong technical run, it wasn’t enough to better his first run and he finished in second place with an overall score of 180.00
Norway’s Mons Roisland finished third overall with a score of 179.33.
Karen Price is a reporter from Pittsburgh who has covered Olympic sports for various publications. She is a freelance contributor to TeamUSA.org on behalf of Red Line Editorial, Inc.