Wachendorfer: Several factors helped in leading US field at X Games
Edwards snowboarder's 4th place run among the best results of his career
To lead the U.S. field at the sport’s biggest annual event is a dream come true moment for any halfpipe athlete.
Ryan Wachendorfer, of Edwards, enjoyed that moment over the weekend as he finished fourth behind the stars of the sport including Scotty James and the Hirano brothers.
But for Wachendorfer, who was a math wiz at Vail Ski and Snowboard Academy before dedicating his life to snowboarding, the finish also requires some post-competition calculations — What are the factors that allowed him to achieve this dream result?
One thing to consider would have to be the weather, Wachendorfer said this week. Leading up to Saturday night’s event, the Aspen Buttermilk venue had seen snow during the day.
“The rest of the week, the pipe had been running really good,” Wachendorfer said. “But then I showed up to the first practice (on the day of the competition) and it was slow to the point where I couldn’t even do half of my run.”
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For the athletes who had spent the week training in the Buttermilk halfpipe and were feeling good with a planned-out routine, the snowy practice was quite a disruption.
“It was like oh wow, we’re going to have to switch things up,” Wachendorfer said.
Snowboarders don’t get a lot of experience competing under the lights at night, but some have more experience than others. Those who get the yearly X Games invite, for one, get to know the feeling pretty well.
But Wachendorfer hasn’t had a lot of X Games invites. His first time competing was in 2020, which didn’t feature a standard halfpipe competition format. This year’s event was his first-ever halfpipe finals, and Wachendorfer saw the ways in which the nighttime halfpipe competition atmosphere can be beneficial.
“It takes some of the weather element out of it,” Wachendorfer said of nighttime competition. “There’s not really any shadows, but at the same time, there’s no flat light under the lights. You don’t have to worry about if it’s going to be a cloudy day.”
The run that Wachendorfer landed to position him in fourth wasn’t his best, but another interesting factor came into play.
Instead of trying to learn new tricks during his summer training block, Wachendorfer spent his time going back to the drawing board, looking at some film and trying to make some of his already dialed-in tricks look better.
On one of his standard tricks, a frontside 1260, “it’s always been that trick that I can do pretty consistently, but it wasn’t always the best looking 12,” Wachendorfer said. “It’s a big trick, it’s a big rotation trick, but I think I lost out on some points because of the way it looked. So this summer in Mt. Hood I reworked the whole 12 and relearned it in a completely different way.”
Flash forward to X Games, Wachendorfer had landed a smooth run with a pair of doublecork 1080s and a pair of 900s, one of which is the stylish double Michalchuk, which the crowd enjoyed as the run was coming to a close.
With just one final trick to go, Wachendorfer went for his new and improved frontside 1260. It came around nicely and the judges rewarded him for the effort.
“It was super cool to have the crowd there, the whole coral at the bottom was full,” Wachendorfer said. “I tried not to focus on it too much and just land a run that I was proud of.”
