TIGNES, France — Salt Lake Community College student McRae Williams won a gold medal in the X Games Men's Ski Slopestyle finals.
Williams, a 22 year-old Salt Lake City resident, was victorious in his first trip to an X Games final. "It feels amazing. First-ever X Games finals and a gold medal. I can't believe it," Williams said.
Williams' winning effort included a second-run score of 94.33. He defeated silver medalist Jossi Wells from New Zealand and bronze medalist Gus Kenworthy of the United States.
The Winter X Games Tignes is an international sporting event that consists of men's and women's slopestyle and superpipe competitions for skiers and snowboarders. One of the X Games' most popular events, slopestyle is an event that judges contestants on both the difficulty of the tricks they perform and the amplitude of their jumps. Competitors are rewarded for including a variety of tricks and penalized if the tricks performed are too similar. Slopestyle originated as a snowboarding competition.
Slopestyle, for both skiing and snowboarding will become an Olympic event at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia.