Freeski star Alex Hall upgrades YOG silver to Olympic gold

American freeskier Alex Hall clinched gold in slopestyle at the Olympic Winter Games Beijing 2022 – six years after winning silver in the same event at the Winter Youth Olympic Games Lillehammer 2016.

The 23-year-old laid down a highly technical and progressive opening run in the final, including a leftside double cork 1620 and a rightside double 1080 pretzel 180, to score 90.01 points, which proved to be more than enough to secure gold. Hall’s US team-mate Nick Goepper finished second with a score of 86.48, while Sweden’s Jesper Tjader earned bronze with an 85.35.

 "I'm so stoked,” said Hall afterwards. “I think it hasn't really hit me yet, maybe that's why I'm so calm, but being up here with Jesper and Nick is really special. I love those guys. They're amazing skiers and honestly everyone in finals, everyone in the whole competition - I love them all. We're all really tight friends, which I love about free skiing, and it's an honour to compete with them on the world stage. It honestly hasn't hit me yet, but it means the world to me.”

For Hall, his victory signalled a return to an Olympic podium after his silver medal in slopestyle at Lillehammer 2016 – an experience that left a lasting impression on him.

 **“**It was really cool to be part of something on such a large scale,” he recalled in a recent interview with Olympics.com. “Seeing and meeting so many people from different countries and from different sports was really cool. That was what I enjoyed most about the Youth Olympics. It was also one of my goals to win a medal, so getting a silver was really awesome.”

 According to Hall, his time at the YOG also helped inspire him to make it back to the Olympic stage and compete in the Olympic Winter Games.

 “The main thing I took away [from the YOG] was how cool of an experience it was to go to an Olympic event and be part of such a large-scale event as opposed to just a free skiing event,” he said. “It definitely motivated me to try and make the Olympics.”

Having that motivation clearly worked, with Hall qualifying for the Olympic Winter Games PyeongChang 2018, where he finished 16th in slopestyle. Heading into Beijing 2022, Hall was among the medal favourites, having won bronze at the 2021 World Championships and gold in the Mammoth World Cup event in January, but refused to let that pressure affect his performance.

"I just kept it true to myself,” he said. “I think that's the most important part about our sport is just doing it for the love and doing it how you want to do it and not changing that.”

Hall had finished eighth in big air earlier in the Games – an event that was won by Norway’s Birk Ruud, who beat Hall to slopestyle gold at Lillehammer 2016. Ruud finished fifth in slopestyle in Beijing, but the success he and Hall have both enjoyed at the Games underlines once again how the YOG can be an important stepping stone towards the Olympic podium.