WINTER X 2008 PREVIEW: The Year of The Double

Finally! The world will at long last be able to watch the innovation of Slopestyle and Big Air skiing. Per the request of skiers and nearly every industry insider, the Slopestyle course shifted to looker’s left of the SuperPipe at Aspen’s Buttermilk Mountain. Why should you care? The course the last two years has not allowed skiers to go big and perform off-axis double spins since the gradient is too mellow at Buttermilk. But the new course does not possess any mellow characteristics.

I caught up with Mr. Double himself, Jon Olsson, and Norwegian Andreas Hatveit at the top of the Slopestyle course yesterday in sunny and snowy Aspen. And jump extraordinaire, promoter, sculptor, and industry icon Olsson twiddled his thumbs in approval and excitement for a course that will allow skiers to showcase their oh-so-sweet talents to the world.

“It’s a jumper’s course,” said Jon at the top of the course after telling me how sore his legs are from squats that he performed the day prior. On a side note, Olsson has been racing in F.I.S.-sanctioned ski race events—Giant Slalom and Super G—during this young ’07-08 season in his bid to make the 2014 Swedish Olympic Ski Team. In fact, Jon placed 16th overall in a Giant Slalom at Park City last week after logging the fastest second run of the race. In other words, wow! What can the Monaco man not do? I don’t know.

Anyhow, the jumps on this course—ranging from 65 to 68 feet according the Breck-based SnowPark Technology course building crew—are massive and have tons of kick. They’re super lippy and poppy and the landings are short and steep making for a lot of speed and little room for error.

Look for Jon to throw multiple doubles, Kiwi Jossi Wells (the youngest competitor in the field at 17) is claiming to throw three 10s (with one of them being a switch double 10) and a 12, and Sammy Carlson is acting like he has a bunch of red ants in his uber-baggy ski pants he’s so pumped on the course in his quest to win gold. Also look out for WX 2005 Slopestyle champ Charles Gangier, Norwegian Andreas Hatveit, WX 2007 Slopestyle bronze medalist Colby West, and another Swede throwing doubles in Jacob Wester.