KILLINGTON, Vt. Maybe Sho Kashima (make that “two-time national dual moguls champion” Sho Kashima) and Landon Gardner should get a sign made for their condo in Kimball Junction. It could read: Podium Place.
Sunday, as the Sprint U.S. Freestyle Championships wound down at this sprawling central Vermont playpen, Kashima outlasted everyone, knocking off Jimmy Discoe to successfully defend his duals crown from a year ago. Gardner defeated Salt Lake’s Jay Bowman-Kirigin for the bronze medal in the Nature Valley Freestyle Challenge that ended the championships.
Kashima and Gardner live together (with Gardner’s galpal, Ani Haas, another talented bumps runner). This summer, Discoe is moving from Ridgway, Colo., to become the fourth member of the faux household.
“It’s pretty cool that all three of us on the podium are going to be in the same house,” Kashima said. Discoe will move in after high school graduation in June.
The podium was, from a Park City standpoint, the perfect ending for the championships, which found mostly sunshine and springtime temps in their second straight visit to Killington. Athletes from the unofficial Freestyle Central dominated everything. They may be from elsewhere, but almost everyone on a podium had Park City – or Utah – roots.
Thursday in halfpipe, the women’s repeat champion was Jen Hudak, who started in Connecticut and grew up skiing just down the road at Okemo Mountain, but who’s lived in Park City for 3-1/2 years. Third place went to Kim Sharp, the new World Junior Championships halfpipe gold medalist from the Park City Freestyle program.
Friday in moguls, Holt Haga, who moved from Idaho a couple of years ago, edged 2005 moguls world champion and ’07 Worlds bronze medalist Nate Roberts with gardner in fourth place. In the women’s dumps event, Lake Tahoe native but longtime Salt Lake resident Shannon Bahrke – Olympic silver medalist, Worlds multi-medalist, 2003 World Cup champion and mythical gold medalist in “comeback” this season – won with Jillian Vogtli, who moved from upstate New York to Park City more than a decade ago after graduating from college, taking silver.
In aerials on Saturday, Jeret “Speedy” Peterson, who’s lived in town for years after moving from Boise, defended his title with Ogden’s Zac Amidan third. Emily Cook, who’s marking a decade in town this year, took the women’s championship with Draper’s Lacy Schnoor as silver medal-winner with Jaime Myers, who’s wrapping up a communications degree at The U and looking at additional studies at Westminster College, in third place
And on Bug-out Day, Sunday, Bahrke and Vogtli went 2-3 behind Tahoe’s Shelly Robertson in the women’s dual moguls.
Nationals, perhaps in freestyle more than any of the other sports governed by the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association, is a chance to make a move toward the national team. A podium at the championships can have a huge impact on an athlete’s career in freestyle. It can open the door; the athlete, though, has to walk – or ski (or flip) – through it.
A look back as things wound down on the 2007 U.S. freestyle skiing season:
Thursday (halfpipe) – Ski cross (the self-styled “motocross on snow”) made the Olympics for 2010, but it’s halfpipe, which is the so-called “new school” event at nationals. Every major ski area – and Killington, which recently was bought by Powdr Corp., is on the podium for major areas east of the Rockies – has a halfpipe.
Hudak, the daughter of a computer science professor at Yale, said she moved to Park City “for the training opportunities” – yet she claims the Aspen Valley Ski and Snowboard Club as her club program. Regardless, she’s at a different level than her skiing opposition. She won with 34.6 points to 29.6 for Sophia Schwartz, who hails from Ketchum, Idaho, but trains at Waterville Valley, N.H., with Kim Sharp third (26.5).
“I skied here a lot when I was younger,” the 20-year-old Hudak said. “Killington always had a great ‘pipe.”
The men’s event went to David Wise, a high school junior from Lake Tahoe, who edged Tucker Perkins by less than a point, 43.7-42.9.
Friday (moguls) – Haga, 23, has a compelling ingredient to his gold-medal tale. He’s been a warrior, skiing the bumps each season and just missing the U.S. Ski Team. He ranked second this winter in the NorAm moguls and dual moguls standings but, more importantly, he learned earlier this month his twin brother, Win (as in Edwin), had been redeployed out of Iraq to Germany. An infantryman, he’s expected to be home in the near future, Haga (pronounced HAY-guh) said.
“Knowing he was in Germany and safe, away from hand-to-hand combat, was one less thing to worry about,” Haga said. Gold medals are nice, but getting your brother home safely from combat trumps everything.
Haga received 27.63 points for his final run with Roberts getting 27.22. Defending champion Dave Babic, a Vermonter, was third and Gardner, at 26.83, missed the podium by .17. The winning run included back-full, a twist and flip on the maneuver coming off the jump at the top of the course, and a D-spin (off-axis, double-rotation) at the bottom.
U.S. championships in any sport (USSA oversees 15 teams in seven sports) can be tumultuous gatherings, but the euphoria surrounding Haga’s triumph may have set an unofficial record for jubilation. Coaches, teammates, almost everyone but a couple of stray dogs, slam-danced together for photos and hugs and high-fives and any other expression of joy. Talk about your Kodak moments.
In the women’s event, Bahrke – sporting splashes of purple hair to go with her signature (but subdued) eye-glitter – stuck her basic heli (360-degree vertical spin) and then a backflip-cross (a flip with her skis pulled up in the form of an X). She had 27.17 to Vogtli’s 26.41 with Montanan Heather McPhie, the World Cup women’s Rookie of the Year in moguls, in third place (25.88).
It’s the end of an outstanding bounce-back season for Bahrke, who was considering retirement a year ago. She had been on a nice roll – 2002 Olympic silver, 2003 World Championships bronze medal in duals at Deer Valley to go with her World Cup crown and four U.S. titles in three seasons – until she broke her jaw in ’04 when she slammed down on a ski pole in mid-run in Japan. The next year she tore a knee ligament.
She returned a year ago, made the Olympics but was disappointed in her skiing. “Y’know, when [success] comes like that, you sometimes take it for granted and think it’s going to continue…and when it doesn’t, that can be tough,” she said.
But Bahrke didn’t want to retire on the frustrations of an Olympic season, so she came back this year. She won two World Cup events – including during the Chevrolet Freestyle International at Deer Valley in January – and was No. 2 in World Cup moguls points. At the World Championships, she was duals silver medalist. A gold medal at nationals (and the $3,400 that came with it) was soooo-weet!
Saturday (aerials) – Cook, who grew up in the Boston area and graduated from Maine’s Carrabassett Valley Academy, missed the middle of the 2007 season, nursing a back problem. She returned in time to compete at the World Championships where she was sixth. Returning to New England, she felt a big comfort factor; her lone U.S. title had come at Waterville Valley in 2001 and she figured to have a small brigade of family and friends cheering for her.
Cook not only won, she did it with her highest personal score (185.04). Second place went to Schnoor (146.59), who will be working this summer to upgrade the difficulty of her jumps. Cook, at the same time, will be looking to add a second triple-twisting-double (three twists, two flips) as she eyes competing until the 2010 Olympics.
“It’s so great to be back here,” Cook said. “I’m really excited. I feel like I’m moving in the right direction, always moving forward, looking toward 2010.”
Peterson slapped back on his “Hurricane” (five twists, three flips – the most difficult jump in aerials) but still eked out the win with 186.15 points. Dylan Ferguson was second (166.99) with Amidan (166.52) completing the podium.
Peterson, who set records for points on a jump and in a snowy competition at Deer Valley in January, was glad he could try his trademark jump in a competition “because I want to get as many of these under my belts as I can. I’m still on the learning curve with it.”
Still, he conceded, “That wasn’t the jump I was looking for, by any means, but it worked.”
Sunday (duals) – An overnight storm left four or five inches of wet, soupy snow on the Outer Limits moguls run, which was skied off by the competitors, but later became slushy as the temperature went up.
The women’s finale was a duel between two Squaw Valley skiers, Bahrke and Shelly Robertson. While Bahrke had a problems landing one of her jumps, Robertson tore away for the win. Third place went to Vogtli, who beat McPhie.
Minutes later, Kashima and Discoe did their Keystone Kops routine, each of them crashing on his final jump in an almost surreal conclusion. Kashima got to his feet first and skied to the finish…and another gold medal.
Kashima described his jump: “I came in a little out of control. I was kicking, fighting, stretching to land on my feet. Up top I did an emergency backflip – I was supposed to do a cork-7 [D-spin – off-axis, double-rotation], but it was kind of a mess of a run. But, it worked out well…
“I just wish that last run could’ve been better. I would have felt better landing that last jump.”
Discoe’s call on his jump: “It was gonna just be a big back-X [backflip-cross], but I got a little bucked on that last mogul and it kinda threw me off the lip a little quicker than I wanted. It’s kinda funny because right when I took off I saw Sho out of the corner of my eye and he was stretching [to get his feet under him for the landing] the same as I was. Basically, it was just survival after that.”
Undoubtedly, it will give them plenty of fodder for laughter this summer.
Versus network, the old OLN, will have Killington highlights Sunday at 1 p.m. – moguls, aerials and halfpipe at 1, then the dual moguls taffypull ar 2 p.m.