Amidst the cut-throat competition going on in Beijing Olympics 2022, several names of the winners are coming up. But undoubtedly the most prominent of them have to be Ayumu Hirano of Japan who landed multiple triple corks. This fetched her a golden feat and made her the gold medallist in a dramatic halfpipe final.
Ayumu has been winning silver medals all these while in the Olympic games. This is the first time the snowboarder has won a gold medal in an Olympics. This makes it even more special to him. However, in past, he has won gold medals in the Winter Games.
The 23-year-old snowboarding star from Japan scored triple corks on all three of his runs. But it was his third one — the final run of the tournament — that pushed Australia’s Scotty James off the top of the leaderboard in the men’s snowboard halfpipe final.
The most-discussed-about trick in snowboarding is surely the triple cork. This is also because it is widely anticipated that it would be necessary to win gold at the Olympics. Ayumu was the only rider who had landed the move in a competition.
But, up until that point, he had never completed an entire contest run that included the technique. Ruka Hirano and Yuto Totsuka, two of his colleagues, have landed the triple cork in training. But to the surprise not in competition, and it’s rumored that other riders are working on it as well.
Ayumu was the only rider to even attempt the triple cork, demonstrating that he had the trick down pat. He got it on Run 1, but it was one of the other routines that he missed. Then he came back on Run 2, hitting for the fences on every pitch. Then he further, hit the cycle for the first time in his career.
The judges ranked Ayumu second after James, who had earlier landed an incredibly difficult run that included a switch backside 1260 and cab double cork 1440 on the first two hits, respectively.
So he stomped an even cleaner version of his last run, which comprised two 1440s and two 1260s. In addition to the triple cork, the judges scored him a tremendous 96.00 to catapult him into first place and onto the podium.
After India, the US, and several other countries together boycotted the Beijing Olympics 2022, the competition was noticeably reduced. The countries jointly decided to not allow their diplomats to be a part of any of the ceremonies.
Further, the broadcasting was also not done by any of the channels in these countries. However, one athlete from India is still a part of the Olympic games.
China after the news of the boycott issued a statement urging countries do not to involve politics and sports. They said that the Olympics or any other sports even should not be politicized.
When Ayumu was asked about his win he warmly said that the feeling hasn’t sunk but it was one of his childhood dreams that came true!