Milan: Yu Seung-eun captured the bronze medal in her Olympic debut in the women's big air snowboard event at the Milan-Cortina Winter Games on Monday. Yu earned 171.00 points in the final at Livigno Snow Park in Livigno, north of Milan, to become the first South Korean woman to win an Olympic snowboard medal.
According to Yonhap News Agency, this was South Korea's second medal here in northern Italy, with the first one having also come from snowboarding - silver by Kim Sang-kyum in the men's parallel giant slalom on Sunday. The 12 snowboarders in the final each performed three times, and the sum of their two best scores counted as their final score.
Kokomo Murase of Japan took the gold medal with 179.00 points, after earning 89.75 points in her first run and 89.25 points in her third run. Zoi Sadowski Synnott of New Zealand rallied to take the silver medal with 172.25 points. She only earned 27.75 points in her first run but posted scores of 88.75 and 83.50 in her next two runs to zip past Yu for second place.
Yu had the second-highest score in the first run with 87.75 points, after executing a backside triple cork 1440 mute grab - involving three off-axis inversions and four full rotations with the front hand grabbing between the toes in front of the front binding. In her second run, Yu landed a frontside triple cork 1440 Indy grab, with three off-axis inversions and four full rotations, plus a grab between the feet on the toe edge. The trick netted Yu 83.25 points, and the total of 171.00 points catapulted her to the top of the leaderboard.
As the leader through two runs, Yu was the last snowboarder to perform the third run. She watched as both Murase and Sadowski Synnott put up scores in the 80s. Yu attempted the same move in her second run and landed on her back, earning only 20.75 points, yet she still finished 11.50 points clear of Mia Brookes of Britain for the bronze.
Big air made its Olympic debut at the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Games. Snowboarders drop into the ramp and launch off one big jump to perform flips and spins. They are judged on difficulty, execution, height and distance of their jumps, and their landing.