Jamie Anderson looks on at the 2020 Dew Tour on Feb. 9, 2020 in Copper Mountain, Colo.
Sometimes one is all you need.
That was the case on Friday for three-time Olympic medalist Jamie Anderson, who nailed her first run with a big score that held through the rest of the final to win her eighth women’s slopestyle snowboarding title at the Burton US Open in Vail, Colorado.
It’s been quite a year so far for even for the highly accomplished Anderson, who won the slopestyle title at the X Games, U.S. Grand Prix, Dew Tour and now the Burton US Open.
It's also turning into a huge year for 17-year-old Dusty Henricksen, the 2020 Youth Olympic Games gold medalist who finished second on Friday in the men’s competition, bumping defending champion and Olympic gold medalist Red Gerard to third in the process.
Anderson, 29, won her first women’s slopestyle event at the Burton US Open in 2007. Her last title came in 2018, when the finals were canceled because of high winds and they used the results from the semifinals. She finished seventh in the semifinal in 2019 and missed the final.
With her first run Anderson cruised through the top rail and transitional features and finished things off with a can double-cork 900 on the last jump. That scored an 84.50 to lead the pack, and no one could top her the rest of the day. Austria’s Anna Gasser finished second with 81.00 points, and Japan’s Miyabi Onitsuka was third with 76.65.
Gerard was one of the first to go in the men’s final, and his first-run score of 84.40 held as the best of the day up until Japan’s Yuki Kadono overtook him midway through the second run with an 89.30.
The field was rearranged based on standing for the third and final run, and it was there that Henricksen unleashed the trick of the day. A rookie on the U.S. snowboarding team, Henricksen was making his Burton US Open debut and had already accomplished plenty just by qualifying in first place to make the final. Looking calm and collected all day, he landed a backside quad cork 1800 for the first time ever at the event on just his second attempt ever, his first being unsuccessful on run No. 2.
His score of 84.70 wasn’t enough to win, but it was enough to bump Gerard to third. Henricksen also won the U.S. Grand Prix, a world cup event, at the beginning of the month.
Karen Price is a reporter from Pittsburgh who has covered Olympic and Paralympic sports for various publications. She is a freelance contributor to TeamUSA.org on behalf of Red Line Editorial, Inc.
