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Sansalone stands alone at Big Air
By Jim Loftus
ESPN.com

CRESTED BUTTE, Colo. -- After the first round of Monday's Big Air snowboarding event at the X Games, Kevin Sansalone was as far away from the podium as he could get without having bailed out a day earlier.

The one-day postponement trimmed the men's field to 18 jumpers, and Sansalone was ranked dead last after a big-time faceplant on the landing of his first attempt.

Two attempts later, however, Sansalone not only was on the podium -- he was at its top.

The 23-year-old Canadian nailed back-to-back huge jumps to take the gold medal in front of Peter Line and Kevin Jones.

 Barrett Christy
Women's champ Barrett Christy waits for the posting of her first-place finish.
In the women's competition, Barrett Christy won the gold by throwing a backside 360 with mute grab on her first two attempts to post a commanding lead. By the time her third attempt came around, she already had the gold locked up.

Tara Dakides picked up the silver, recovering from a bad first attempt to sport a couple of styling front flips, and Canadian Janet Matthews took the bronze.

Sansalone, making his X Games debut, was a little shaky after his first attempt.

"Yeah, I fell pretty hard on my first jump, and I blew my shoulder," he said later. "It was really hurting me, but I blocked it out, kept moving it, kept it warm, but it'll stiffen up tomorrow morning, that's for sure."

Sansalone fought it off to stomp consecutive switch 90 rolls, both scoring in the mid-80s. His final two-jump average of 85.88 was just enough to hold off Line, who scored the best single jump of the day on his final attempt to take the silver medal.

 Kevin Sansalone
Kevin Sansalone came in switch for a 90 roll that was golden.
"It's like old faithful for me, it's like one of my safety tricks," Sansalone said of the trick. "It's got a good degree of difficulty, and I'm real comfortable with it, so that's why I threw it."

Line skidded hard on the landing of his first attempt but followed that with a solid switch frontside 720. Still, he was ranked 13th after two rounds.

"It's two combined, and I just fell on one of them," Line said, "so it's not exactly 13th. I just had to land the last one."

And land it he did, exhibiting his trademark smooth style when the pressure was on. Though he wobbled a bit on the landing, the judges rewarded his switch cork 900 with 90 points -- the highest mark of the day.

"That was sketchy," he said. "I barely had that one. I did it once during practice, and I had to do something hard in order to do good."

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