Japan’s Hiroto Ogiwara Wins X Games Big Air Gold

Hiroto Ogiwara will leave Aspen with a fractured wrist and a gold medal.

The 20-year-old Japanese snowboarder — who’s also a student at Sendai University — landed the first melon 2340 in a competition on his way to X Games Aspen gold. He did so in the first run of the finals, and it landed him a score of 97.33. No one else even came close.

It was an incredible moment, seeing as how Ogiwara was the last man into the finals. It was also an incredible moment because he fractured his wrist during practice earlier that day.

Ogiwara beat out fellow countryman and reigning Big Air champion Taiga Hasegawa in the process. Hasegawa finished with the silver medal and laid down the world’s first cab 2160 in a competition. He then capped off the finals with a mellow backside 900 to please the crowd. New Zealand’s Rocco Jamieson landed his bloody Dracula 1800 continuously and tried to force one more spin in his last run of the finals. He was unable to land it, which secured the order of the podium.

Norwegian Mons Roisland finished in fourth place. Markus Kleveland fell hard on his second hit of the contest, and that forced him to sit out the knuckle huck contest that followed.

Women’s knuckle huck went off earlier that day, and Kokomo Murase reclaimed her throne, as she won the gold medal. Mia Brookes landed a 1080 and a miller flip 360 en route to a silver medal.

Lily Dhawornvej continued her red-hot winter, as she tame dogged her way into a bronze medal.

The men’s knuckle huck contest was one of the most creative we’ve ever seen. Ziyang Wang spun his way onto the podium with a nollie 1440 off the knuckle, then solidified his gold medal with a nollie triple tame dog. Dusty Henricksen showed off his narcoleptic tendencies with a tail press to double tame dog.

Newcomer Patrick Hofmann, though, took the title of most creative on his way to a silver. His first run featured a cab backside 180 that he pulled off with just one foot — his back foot — strapped in. Another run found him penguin sliding on his belly and holding it for what seemed like the entirety of the jump’s landing.

Even Google co-founder Sergey Brin was on hand, awkwardly dancing in his unzipped Canada Goose jacket during the medal presentation ceremony. The broadcast used it as a way to transition into a feature on Owl AI, the artificial intelligence judging tool made in collaboration with Google Cloud.

Zeb Powell brought out three different snowboards to use during the contest. He brought his signature coffin slide back from the 2020 contest that . His final run featured a hand drag across Alex Caccamo’s snowboard while he laid on the ground. It was an incredible showing as always, but a fall during his second-to-last hit kept him away from a spot on the podium.