On February 16, the final of the men's steeplechase at the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics came to an end, with Alexander Hall of the United States, nicknamed "King of Difficulty", winning gold, his teammate Nicholas Goper winning the silver medal, and Sweden's Jesper Sheide winning the bronze medal.
There were three rounds of skating in the final, and the first round of the original steady row between the players was disrupted by Hall. The eighth place out of the competition, not only took out the difficult action of 1620 degree rotation, but also made a bounce and jump in the jumping platform area and the body "twist twist" action when the last jump landed, the whole set of actions is very creative, obtained a high score of 90.01 points, and also became the only player who crossed the 90 point line in the three rounds of final scores, locking the gold medal in advance. In the second skate, Hall's score failed to exceed the first round of skating, and the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics freestyle skiing men's steeplechase runner-up Gopper scored 86.48 points, rushing to the second place in the standings, but still could not shake Hall's super high score in the first round. It is worth mentioning that Norway's Birk Rude, who started his winter Olympic journey for the first time, continued to compete in the slope obstacle course after winning the freestyle ski men's big jump championship, but the first and second slides were both wrong and missed the medal.
In the first slide of the final, Hall's whole set of actions was very creative, locking in the champion in advance.
At the end of the three rounds of the final, Hall won the championship without suspense, Goper won the silver medal in two consecutive Winter Olympics, and Shedd, who won the bronze medal, reached the podium for the first time after participating in the Third Winter Olympics. After the game, Hall said: "I was a little surprised to successfully complete the first skate, I have only completed some of them before, and I have never strung them together, this game is definitely the best game of my career. The other players are also great, we are all very close friends, and it is an honor to compete with them in the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics. ”
Born in 1998, Hall competed at the 2018 Winter Olympics in PyeongChang and finished only 16th. These four years have been four years of rapid growth, winning the World Extreme Games championship in 2019 and winning three World Cup championships in the same year. Hall has been in excellent form this season, having just won the Mammoth Mountain In the United States in January 2022 at the Freestyle Slope Steeplechase World Cup, and is in good form before the Beijing Winter Olympics.
After the game, Hall (left) celebrates with his idol, Goper.
At the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, Hall tried the super difficult move of 2160 degrees (that is, 6 weeks of rotation) in the final of the freestyle ski men's big jump, but unfortunately failed and won the 8th place. Moving to the slope obstacle course, he continued to make difficult moves, and this time succeeded.
In fact, Goper, the silver medalist of the final and the bronze medalist at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, is also Hall's idol, saying: "At the age of 16, I watched Gopper on the podium of the Winter Olympics. Now we're competing together, standing on the podium together, and he's inspired a generation of athletes, including me. ”
For more information, please pay attention to the Winter Olympics.
Photo courtesy of Xinhua News Agency
Source Client The Winter Olympics | Reporters Li Yuanfei, Chen Jiakun, and Deng Fangjia
Edited by Kang Dian
Process Editor Liu Weili