USA wins gold as aerials mixed team event makes its Olympic debut

The United States took a bold and aggressive approach to the inaugural aerials mixed team competition and it paid off big time, as they upset China to win gold at Olympic Winter Games Beijing 2022 on Thursday.

Ashley Caldwell, Christopher Lillis and Justin Schoenefeld (USA) scored a combined 338.34 points to pull ahead of the more experienced and older trio from China, who led after the first round.

“The Chinese team is formidable, and we knew we needed to execute if we were going to beat them,” Caldwell said. “They are incredible jumpers, and we needed the top degree of difficulty to do that.”

USA entered the competition with the highest degree of difficulty in the qualification round, their sequence of jumps totalling 13.343 – just 0.1 higher than China, who had won both world cup events this season.

In the final, USA ramped that up even further, with Lillis going for the most technically challenging jump of the night, a quintuple twisting triple – known as a back double full-full-double full. The judges rewarded his effort and execution with 135 points, the highest score seen so far at the Secret Garden Olympic Aerials Course.

“We talked with our coaches and with each other coming into the event about how we wanted to come in and what we wanted to achieve,” said Lillis, “I think this team’s goal was gold medal (all) the way. We knew we had that capability with Ashley (Caldwell) doing triple twisting triples, being one of the only females in the world who can do that.

“I was happy to throw the ‘quin’ (he did a back double full-full-double full – difficulty degree 5.0). It’s been going really well in training, so that helped with that decision and Justin (Schoenefeld) has been really consistent coming into this event. So I would say that we maybe took a more aggressive approach but really I just think that we competed at this team’s capability and that is what we expect of ourselves going forward as well.”

This is the first gold medal for USA in an aerials event since 1998 when Eric Bergoust and Nikki Stone (USA) won the men’s and women’s events, respectively.

“Before that last jump my coach looked at me and said, ‘All we’ve got to do is land,’ and I said, ‘I can do that.’ Honestly. I looked at him and said, ‘I knew exactly what I have to do’ and hop-turned right to that jump and I did what I had to, said Schoenefeld, “I landed and got down there and saw my teammates just freaking out and we all knew that we did it. We’re going to be on the podium.”

To the disappointment of an enthusiastic hometown crowd at Genting Snow Park, China faltered in the final.

Jia Zongyang (CHN) – a two-time individual Olympic Games medallist in aerials – was unable to stick his back full-double full-full and flipped over his skis, somersaulting down the landing. He stayed facing forward, his gymnastics training keeping him upright, but the damage was done. He scored 96.02. China ended the night more than 14 points behind USA, with 324.22.

“A mistake today,” JIA, 30, said. “It’s a mistake. What has happened has happened. I will pull myself together and prepare for the next events.”

Xu Mengtao (CHN) said her teammate’s stumble left her momentarily “cold hearted”.

“I was a little bit disappointed for two seconds,” the 31-year-old said. “I know he is even more upset than I was. Nobody wanted to have that landing in the final.”

XU’s score of 106.03 was the highest of all women in the final.

With the silver medal for China Jia Zongyang became the third athlete to claim an Olympic medal in freestyle skiing in a record three editions of the Olympic Winter Games, after Mikael Kingsbury (CAN) and Kari Traa (NOR).

Marion Thenault, Miha Fontaine and Lewis Irving (CAN) finished ahead of Switzerland to take the bronze medal with 290.98 points.

“It’s crazy. I have been working very hard over the past few years, and I’ve been learning a lot and living a lot of experiences,” said Thenault, “It’s culminating today as an Olympic medallist with my team – it just feels awesome. We really showed what we are capable of doing and I’m really proud of what I’ve accomplished in these past four years.”

Miha Fontaine reached the podium like his father Nicolas Fontaine (CAN) did at Albertville 1992 when he placed second in men’s aerials when it was still a demonstration event.

The aerials action at OWG is far from over with women’s individual competition taking place on Sunday and Monday (qualifications and finals), February 13-14, with men following up on Tuesday and Wednesday, February 15-16.

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