Parrot gets gold, McMorris bronze in snowboard slopestyle double podium at Beijing 2022
Team Canada has won its third and fourth medals of Beijing 2022, courtesy of Max Parrot and Mark McMorris in slopestyle snowboard.
Parrot earned Canada’s first gold medal of the Games, while McMorris earned his third straight Olympic bronze medal in the event. The duo are sharing the podium for the second straight Games after winning silver and bronze at PyeongChang 2018. Parrot is Canada’s first ever Olympic gold medallist in slopestyle, which was added to the Olympic program at Sochi 2014.
After finishing 10th in the qualification round, Parrot was the first of three Canadians in the final to hit the course. He laid down a strong opening run, scoring 79.86. Sébastien Toutant, who had qualified eighth, was next up and he was having himself a solid run until he couldn’t hold the landing on his final jump. As the second qualifier, Mark McMorris went second to last in each run. He had a good first one, except for some shakiness on his final jump landing, but he managed to stay upright and scored 76.98 points.
After the first run, Parrot was in third, McMorris in fifth and Toutant in seventh. American Red Gerrard, the reigning Olympic champion, held onto first place with 83.25 points.
In his second run, Parrot cleaned up his execution and got the points to match, earning 90.96 from the judges. He was the first rider to break the 90-point mark in the competition. Toutant unfortunately couldn’t lay down a clean second run and was still counting his first run score.
Team Canada snowboarder Max Parrot reacts after his run in the men’s Slopestyle finals during the Beijing 2022 Olympic Winter Games on Monday, February 07, 2022. Photo by Darren Calabrese/COC *MANDATORY CREDIT* 
Team Canada snowboarder Mark McMorris reacts after his run in the men’s Slopestyle finals during the Beijing 2022 Olympic Winter Games on Monday, February 07, 2022. Photo by Darren Calabrese/COC *MANDATORY CREDIT*
McMorris showed off his flawless style in his second run and improved his score to 80.85 points, which put him into third place until he was pushed out of a podium spot by China’s Su Yiming, who earned 88.70 points to take over second place behind Parrot heading into the final runs.
Content with the score he had posted in his second run, Parrot took it easy and just had some fun on his final ride down the course rather than push for even more technical difficulty. With the pressure on to get a podium score in his final run, Toutant was landing everything cleanly until his final jump, when he just lost his edge and went down. He ended up in ninth place overall.
As for McMorris, he saved his best for last. A perfectly clean run capped by a 1600 for his final jump earned him 88.53 points to get onto the third step of the podium for the third straight Games. Su’s second run score held up for the silver medal.
