LIVIGNO, Italy – The difference between silver and gold in the Olympic men’s big air came down to who did a trick called “nose butter” better.
The fact that anyone could do it was one of the amazing things to come from a competition that anyone watching will remember for a long time.
Tormod Frostad of Norway defeated Mack Forehand of the United States by 2.25 points in Tuesday’s final, despite the score being close to the maximum of 200 points. Frostad did just that — but with his own physics-defying twist — by buttering the nose on all three of his jumps in Tuesday night’s snowy freeskiing nail-biter on the big hill.
The 24-year-old forehand’s reaction after such a close defeat?
“I’m glad to have survived that incident,” he said. “It was very overwhelming, people were going crazy and it’s a really dangerous sport. I’m happy to be skiing and recovered, and [to do so] It’s also great to have a silver medal.”
Frostad had the lead for most of the 12-man final after making two big jumps. But Forehand turned an exciting contest on its head when he edged ahead of Frosted in the second to last jump of the night.
It turned what had looked like a win for Frosted into the most stressful jump of her career.
But the 23-year-old Norwegian produced another impeccable effort to secure his first gold medal in just his second Games.
Frostad finished with 195.50 points against 193.25 on the forehand.
Her key to facing this moment? Didn’t really care what happened next.
Frosted said, “Yeah, I didn’t really care because I was already so happy and I could ski the last run with joy in my body and just throw a fun trick.”
Forehand displayed incredibly difficult moves that focused on spins and flips, including a last move that he had never landed and was recently “joked about”, but Frostad did something else: he took the game in a new direction. Literally.
Instead of avoiding a jump designed to send skiers backward, Frosted defied physics and spun forward off that ramp.
One of those tricks was a trick that no one had seen before in a big air jump. That, in short, is the core concept of these sports – “progression”, the drive for each generation, each skier to develop a new twist, a new twist, something new to take the sport much further.
“This is the hard part of my trick,” Frostad said. “And to really get into that pivot, you have to be extremely precise, and the judges are aware of that, and that’s why they gave me very good scores.”
Great? She ate it up and got scores of 95.25, 97 and then got the gold medal with 98.50 on her last jump, when everything depended on her or her forehand for the gold.
Feeling like he was part of a history-making night, American Connor Ralph tried the triple-cork 2160 – that is, six full spins – for the first time. He achieved this and finished fifth, one place behind teammate Troy Podmilsak, which was the best overall performance by the US in snowpark events (freeskiing and snowboarding) at these Olympics.
“Even though I knew I needed 115 to win, I still thought, ‘Whatever it takes, you’ve got to go for it, it’s the Olympics,'” Ralph said.
But this night was not just about the most wanderlust.
Forehand said, “Tormod was doing two tricks today that have never been done before, and it’s low rotation but the takeoffs are very fair and very nice and different and he totally deserves that win.” “It’s not all about changes to our game; it’s about style, creativity.”
2022 gold medalist Birk Ruud, who finished eighth after two crashes, agreed that Frostad won because he did the unexpected.
“Torm had the aces with the ‘Butter Double Bio,'” Rood said.
Rood said, “No matter what trick comes after him”, no one can be better than Frostad. “So that means progress isn’t just hanging around.”
Frostad and Forehand both said they would have been happy with any color of medal, having participated they agreed that this was a final forever – the constant snowfall did nothing to slow down the 12 finalists.
Frosted said, “I mean, shout out to everyone. They killed it.” “We all performed amazingly well, and even though the conditions were quite challenging, it still turned out to be possibly one of the greatest events ever.”
