X Games Aspen Research Update for January 26, 2021

Say What? (All quotes provided directly to researchers unless otherwise noted.)

Aspen local Alex Ferreira, the two-time defending Ski SuperPipe champ, on his focus at X Games:

“I do tend to have my best results in Aspen. That’s been my career. I don’t typically do well at the World Cups. I do well at X Games and the bigger events because I just think there’s more on the line. It’s more intense. It matters so much more. X Games is truly our Super Bowl of skiing. It’s every little kid’s dream when they’re 10 years old to win X Games. It’s the big Kahuna.”

Youth at X Games Aspen 2021 As of January 26, 16 teenagers are scheduled to compete at X Games Aspen 2021. Thirty of the 78 athletes currently on the X Games roster are 21 and under.

• Aspen 2021: the 16 teens make up 20 percent of the field. • The 30 athletes age 21 and under comprise 38% of the field. • Fun Fact: 24 athletes at XG Aspen 2021 were born after made his X Games rookie appearance at Mount Snow 2000. That’s 31%. White is now the oldest athlete scheduled to compete at Aspen 2021 (34 yrs. 4 mos.).

Ten Youngest at XG Aspen 2021 (Youngest to Oldest) Age Sport/Discipline Career Medals Sonny Alba* 14 (W) SBD SuperPipe - Brooke D’Hondt 15 (W) SBD SuperPipe - Kokomo Murase 16 (W) SBD / 1 gold, 3 silver, 1 bronze Eileen Gu* 17 (W) SKI Slopestyle/SuperPipe/Big Air - Dusty 17 (M) SBD Big Air/Slopestyle/Knuckle Huck - Henricksen* Zoe Atkin 18 (W) SKI SuperPipe - Ruka Hirano* 18 (M) SBD SuperPipe - Kelly Sildaru 18 (W) SKI Big Air/Slopestyle/SuperPipe 5 gold, 3 silver, 1 bronze Ruki Tomita* 19 (W) SBD SuperPipe - Reira Iwabuchi 19 (W) SBD Big Air/Slopestyle 1 silver, 1 bronze *XG Rookie

Can Kelly Conquer?

• No teenagers competing at X Games Aspen 2021 are young enough to set new medal records or even register among the top 10 on the youngest winter event athletes of all-time, but two notable teen records could fall.

• With any medal, Kelly Sildaru, 18, surpasses both Nyjah Huston and Shaun White for most X Games medals earned as a teenager. She’s one behind both of them in gold medals. Sildaru is scheduled to compete in all three women’s Ski disciplines. She won Slopestyle and SuperPipe at Aspen 2020

Most X Games Medals as a Teenager Count Breakdown Sport Teen Years Shaun White 9 6 gold, 3 silver SBD/SKB 2002-2006 Nyjah Huston 9 6 Gold, 2 silver, 1 bronze SKB 2009-2014 Kelly Sildaru* 9 5 gold, 3 silver, 1 bronze SKI 2016- Tom Schaar 8 1 gold, 3 silver, 4 bronze SKB 2013-2019 7 5 gold, 1 silver, 1 bronze SBD 2014-2020 Pedro Barros 7 5 gold, 2 silver SKB 2010-2014 Lyn-z Pastrana 7 3 gold, 3 silver, 1 bronze SKB 2003-2009 *Current teenage athlete

Youngest Aspen 2021 Athletes in Ski & Snowboard

SKI

Eileen Gu, 17: Women’s SuperPipe/Slopestyle/Big Air. This Stanford-bound (1580 SAT!), Mandarin-speaking fashion model from San Francisco claims skiing was “just a hobby” until two years ago. She now has three World Cup wins and plans to defer Stanford until after the 2022 Beijing Olympics. She’ll represent China at X Games Aspen (her mother is Chinese). Gu is the only rookie in a Ski discipline at X Games Aspen 2021, but she’s considered a medal contender. She recently learned two forward doubles that will set her apart on the slope course: rightside double 1260 Weddle grab (formally known as mute grab) and left double 1080 Japan grab.

SNOWBOARD (SBD)

Sonny Alba, 14: Women’s SuperPipe. Eighth grader Sonora “Sonny” Alba is the overall youngest competitor at X Games Aspen 2021. Her first pro contest was less than a year ago at the Dew Tour, where she finished 7th in the modified superpipe competition. In March 2020 she won the Burton U.S. Open Junior Jam superpipe final. Watch for old-school flair that belies her young age: she loves alley-oop airs, throws handplants in competition superpipe runs and says Danny Davis is her style icon. A serious gamer (Call of Duty and Fortnite, and she has played Rocket League), she is one of four female members of the U.S. Snowboard Pro Halfpipe Team.

Ten Youngest X Games Winter Event Medalists, All Time Age Year/Sport/Discipline Finish Kokomo Murase 13 yrs. 6 mos. 2018 : SBD Big Air (W) Gold Chloe Kim 13 yrs. 9 mos. 2014 Aspen: SBD SuperPipe (W) Silver Kelly Sildaru 13 yrs. 11 mos. 2016 Aspen: SKI Slopestyle (W) Gold Kokomo Murase 14. yrs. 9 mos. 2019 Norway: SBD Big Air (W) Silver Ayumu Hirano 14 yrs. 1 mo. 2013 Aspen: SBD SuperPipe (M) Silver Chloe Kim 14 yrs. 8 mos. 2015 Aspen: SBD SuperPipe (W) Gold Kelly Sildaru 14 yrs. 11 mos. 2017 Aspen: SKI Slopestyle/Big Air Gold/Silver Kelly Sildaru 15 yrs. 0 mos. 2017 Norway: SKI Big Air (W) Silver Maggie Voisin 15 yrs. 1 mo. 2014 Aspen: SKI Slopestyle (W) Silver Torin Yater-Wallace 15 yrs. 1 mo. 2011 Aspen: SKI SuperPipe (M) Silver

Ten Youngest XG Winter Event Athletes of All Time Age Year/Sport/Discipline Finish Jamie Anderson 13 yrs. 4 mos. 2004: Snowboarder X (W) 9th Shaun White 13 yrs. 5 mos. 2000: SBD SuperPipe (M) 15th Kokomo Murase 13 yrs. 6 mos. Norway 2018: SBD Big Air (W) Gold Troy Horbaty 13 yrs. 7 mos. Aspen 2019: Snow BikeCross 16th Chloe Kim 13 yrs. 9 mos. 2014: SBD SuperPipe (W) Silver Kelly Sildaru 13 yrs. 11 mos. Aspen 2016: SKI Slopestyle (W) Gold Kelly Sildaru 14 yrs. 0 mos. Oslo 2016: SKI Big Air (W) 4th Ayumu Hirano 14 yrs. 1 mo. Aspen 2013: SBD SuperPipe (M) Silver Jamie Anderson 14 yrs. 4 mos. 2005: Snowboarder X (W) 8th Shaun White 14 yrs. 4 mos. 2001: SBD Slopestyle/SuperPipe 7th/9th

SNOWBOARD

Max Parrot: Extraordinary Recovery Max Parrot has made a career of beating everyone else on the roster. But his biggest triumph has been beating cancer.

Parrot finished his chemotherapy treatment for Hodgkin lymphoma in June 2019. The French-Canadian says it’s difficult for him to talk about his competition accomplishments since then without getting emotional:

• Big Air gold at XG Norway 2019 in August, just two months after his oncologist’s all- clear. “A career highlight contest for me, the one I’ll remember for the rest of my life.” • Big Air gold at XG Aspen 2020 in January, a triumphant return after missing the contest in 2019 -- his favorite contest every year -- for his first of 12 rounds of chemo. • Big Air silver and Slopestyle gold at XG Norway 2020 in February, his first X Games Slopestyle win since 2014.

Looking back on it all -- cancer, chemo, being broken down, building himself back up, 4 X Games medals post-chemo -- Max says he’s been surprised to feel an overwhelming sense of gratitude for the entire experience.

“Cancer is something I cannot change in my life path,” he says. “Before having it, I would have never said, ‘Please, God, give me lymphoma so I can be grateful afterwards.’ But I realize that I’ve actually learned a lot from it, and a lot about myself.

“It gave me a lot of time to think about my career, myself, my future, my past, everything,” Parrot continues. “It gave me the power to feel more in the present moment. As nightmarish as it’s all been, I’ve been able to learn and grow from this. I’m 100 percent back, health-wise. I’ve been doing my lymphoma follow-ups and everything is all good: no cancer has come back, which is awesome. Then, to have a dream comeback at X Games? It was definitely one of the greatest years for me.”

Parrot leads his lifelong rival Mark McMorris in Big Air medals despite taking silver to McMorris at Norway 2020. But Max values the competition his fellow Canadian brings. “Mark normally does better in Slopestyle, I do better in Big Air. Norway (2020) went the opposite way. It’s a good, friendly rivalry that adds a little spice to every contest and keeps pressure on both of us.”

All-Time X Games Snowboard Big Air Medals Total Breakdown Max Parrot* 10 6 gold, 4 silver Mark McMorris 9 4 gold, 4 silver, 1 bronze Yuki Kadono* 6 1 gold, 1 silver, 4 bronze * 5 3 gold, 1 silver, 1 bronze Torstein Horgmo 5 3 gold, 2 silver Barrett Christy 5 3 gold, 2 silver Kevin Jones 5 1 gold, 1 silver, 3 bronze *Competing in Big Air at X Games Aspen 2021

• DOB: 6/6/1994. Age: 26. • 13 medals (8 gold, 5 silver) from 13 X Games appearances: 6 gold, 4 silver in Big Air (the most gold and most medals in the discipline); 2 gold, 1 silver in Slopestyle. • Hasn’t missed the XG Aspen Big Air podium in 6 starts (5 gold, 1 silver). Has missed just one XG Big Air podium: Norway 2018 (5th). • Though we focus on his Big Air prowess, Slopestyle gold at XG Norway 2020 was no fluke: Max took Slopestyle silver as a rookie at XG Aspen 2013 and won gold in both Slopestyle and Big Air at XG Aspen 2014. 2018 Olympic slopestyle silver in PyeongChang. Two career slopestyle wins and four slopestyle podiums on the FIS World Cup circuit. • To stay on the safe side of quarantine restrictions in 2020, he skipped his annual training trip to Saas-Fee, SUI, in the fall, opting instead to step up his slopestyle game even further at a rail park in Canada’s Yukon territory.

• Calls the Maximise High Performance Training Center near his Quebec home his secret weapon, with year-round access to jumps, airbags, rails and trampolines. X Games gold medalists Laurie Blouin and Julia Marino are now regulars at the facility. • Though he’s not divulging any secrets, he says his bucket list of never-been-done tricks has gotten both longer and more attainable, hinting he has something new up his sleeve. “The art of snowboarding for me has always been to create new spins and new ways to do tricks. I definitely have tricks I’m working on that nobody, including me, has ever put to snow.” • He’s a real estate investor now. With four partners he opened his first restaurant in spring 2020, Le Numéro 7: Brasserie Moderne, in Saint-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Quebec. “It’s a Portuguese and Japanese-inspired restaurant that we started working on in August 2019, and it’s been a fun learning experience. We opened during COVID, not necessarily the best timing, but we were open for dining all summer and now we’re takeout-only because of the restrictions. We’ve had really good reviews and it’s been exciting to bring some friends out to try it.” • He says lessons learned from snowboarding have absolutely helped in all other areas of his life, from fighting cancer to designing signature gear to sharpening his business acumen. “Snowboarding has taught me to pick myself up fall after fall and to fight to be where I believe I belong. I’m really liking being in this business world now, and as I’m developing new products, seeking out partners and negotiating deals, I realize that experience came from snowboarding, too.” • Still likes fast, impractical cars. Here’s how he gets through the Quebec winters. • Instagram: @maxparrot 182,000 followers; YouTube Channel: 2,000 subscribers

Marcus Kleveland: Human Cheat Code “He’s just mashing buttons out here,” analyst Crag McMorris exclaimed after watching Marcus Kleveland land a butter 540 to nollie 1080 on his way to Snowboard Knuckle Huck gold at XG Norway 2020. Host Brandon Graham was there with the retort: “We call him ‘The Human Cheat Code’ for a reason.”

The tricks Kleveland dances his way into and out of off the knuckle are so wildly creative, so improbable, and so improvisational that even he isn’t quite sure what to make of them sometimes. At XG Aspen 2020 -- where he finished a close second behind Zeb Powell in the gold-only discipline -- he thrilled with combos including a nose-press butter to Cab 540, and a Cab 720 nose-press to inverted 540 hand drag that left McMorris speechless in the booth.

In Norway, with a home crowd of friends and family going nuts at the base of the venue, he did a nose butter 1080 to tail press landing and a nose butter Cab 720 to backside 720 before that 540 to 1080 combo that had the commentary team reaching for metaphors.

“For Knuckle Huck, you just have to be in the zone and let things happen,” Kleveland explains. “It’s the most fun contest of the season. It’s crazy that we actually have a competition at X Games that’s just the knuckle, and that people love it so much. Who would’ve thought?”

Well, X Games organizers, who were inspired to create the contest in large part because of Kleveland’s exploits. In fact, the comp was jokingly dubbed The Marcus Kleveland Invitational before its debut at XG Aspen 2019.

In 2020, Kleveland returned to X Games after a one-year hiatus to recover from a shattered right kneecap (Dec. 2018) and subsequent surgery. At XG Aspen 2020, the two-time Slopestyle gold medalist and three-time Big Air silver medalist was slated to compete in all three disciplines, but he pulled out of Slopestyle and Big Air.

“Last year I was super scared of starting to do the big tricks again,” he admits. He competed in Slopestyle in Norway, finishing 7th, clearly not back to full strength despite his success in Knuckle Huck. Now he says he’s ready for all three disciplines.

“Two months ago, in Stubai, Austria, was the first time I felt 100 percent and able to do all my tricks again,” he says. “I’m sure that this year at X Games is going to be a good show and I’m super happy to feel ready again. My year has basically been all about snowboarding: getting back, riding with friends and having a really good time.”

• DOB: April 25, 1999. Age: 21. • 6 medals from 7 XG appearances: 2 gold in Slopestyle, 1 gold in Knuckle Huck, 3 silver in Big Air. • XG Norway 2020 Knuckle Huck gold (finished 2nd in the gold-only discipline at XG Aspen 2020). • No man owns gold in three different X Games Snowboard disciplines. Kleveland could become the first to complete this hat trick with Big Air gold, but he won’t be a favorite in the discipline at Aspen 2021. • On winning XG Norway 2020 Knuckle Huck just 2 hours away from his Norwegian home: “It for sure meant a lot to get the gold in Norway. It was amazing with all my friends and family standing at the bottom cheering.” • On his Knuckle Huck competition: “From that first one in Aspen, where Fridge (Fridtjof Sæther Tischendorf) won, it’s been a really sick time with crazy innovations of new tricks from every last guy. I love it. And the way Zeb (Powell) rides, it’s just incredible. Some things he does, it looks like he’s going eat it and then, somehow, he just does something crazy and lands on his feet. He and Fridge are some of my favorite riders to watch. I feel like something crazy is going to go down this year.”

• Kleveland was the first person to land a quadruple cork spin in competition, with his backside quad cork 1800 in his silver medal Big Air performance at XG Aspen 2017 (he also won Slopestyle that year). While we’re hoping he’s a podium contender in all three disciplines, an expectation check: he finished 47th in the FIS World Cup big air comp at Kreischberg, Austria on Jan. 9. He did take 3rd in slopestyle at the Laax Open in a contest depleted by Covid. • Says Covid closures didn’t affect him much -- he lives at the base area of Dombås Ski Center, and the lifts were turning until late spring. • He’s concerned that the lack of a crowd will be a bigger factor in Aspen than people realize. “No doubt we’re still going to throw down and have a good time, but having a big crowd down there cheering and getting hyped for the riders is a good vibe and always makes me want to do well. It’s going to be weird to compete without people! We’ll have to get ourselves hyped up.” • Assessing how much slopestyle progressed in his year away from competition: “It’s another level of riding right now, especially with the quarterpipe side hits and everything. You have to ride all types of ways and even be a bit of a pipe rider sometimes, and everybody can throw down crazy stuff. People have also been riding air bags a lot this year, so they could be coming in super confident with new tricks. It’s going to be interesting to see what people throw down.” • Instagram: @marcuskleveland, 486,000 followers. YouTube Channel: 41,800 followers

SKI

Local Boy Does Good: Alex Ferreira A week before X Games Aspen 2020, Aspen local and defending SuperPipe champ Alex Ferreira had coffee with a friend. He picked up a nearby copy of a local Aspen newspaper because the headline caught his attention: “You’re Only as Good as Your Last Gold Medal.”

Below the headline, he saw a picture. His picture.

“Oh, wow,” Ferreira thought. “There’s a lot of pressure now.”

But Ferreira thrives on the pressure that comes from competing in front of the hometown crowd. As the 2019 gold medalist, Ferreira had the final run of the Aspen 2020 SuperPipe contest. Before dropping in, he glanced at the leaderboard -- something he never does -- and saw that he sat in second behind childhood friend Aaron Blunck.

Ferreira knew that he needed to be all in. After pushing out of the start, he says, “I just blacked out and gave it my all.”

His last two hits were two of the hardest of the comp, and Ferreira did them with a ton of amplitude: a left double 1440 Weddle (formerly known as mute) grab and switch right double 1080 Japan. He stomped the landing and immediately began his signature pole twirl.

“I remember thinking, ‘Oh yeah, that’s definitely first,’” Ferreira says with a laugh in this excellent Xplained piece recounting his final run. He was right. The run clinched his second consecutive gold, the first time an Aspen skier has won back-to-back gold on home snow.

“I do tend to have my best results in Aspen,” says Ferreira. “That's been my career. I don’t typically do well at the World Cups. I do well at X Games and the bigger events because I just think there’s more on the line. It’s more intense. It matters so much more.”

Ferreira’s results bear that attitude out: He has 6 X Games medals in his last 7 SuperPipe starts. He finished 4th in the 7th start, at XG Aspen 2016. “X Games is truly our Super Bowl of skiing,” Alex says. “It’s every little kid’s dream when they’re 10 years old to win X Games. It’s the big Kahuna.”

Ferreira is favored to win again at XG Aspen 2021. If successful, he’ll join Tanner Hall as the only skier to win three straight Men’s Ski SuperPipe comps (David Wise did win three straight at X Games Aspen but missed the gold at XG Tignes in the middle of his Aspen streak).

However, Aspen 2021 will be very different for Ferreira, who typically has a corral filled with friends and family. While it seems like he feeds off that energy, he actually thinks the absence of spectators will help him.

“Usually, X Games Aspen is my busiest week of the year,” Alex says. “There’s interviews and there’s company phone calls to take and everyone wants to go to dinner and everyone wants to come over. All my best friends come into town, and they want me to hang out with them. It never ends. So I’m quite excited this year just to really focus on the event and to do my best.”

Ski Medals Earned in Aspen By Aspen Natives Medals Ski Discipline Alex Ferreira* 5: 2 gold, 1 silver, 2 bronze SuperPipe Casey Puckett 4: 2 gold, 2 bronze Skier X Torin Yater-Wallace 4: 2 silver, 2 bronze SuperPipe Peter Olenick 3: 1 gold, 1 silver, 1 bronze SuperPipe High Air, SuperPipe, Slopestyle Sam Ferguson 1 silver Mono Skier X Chris Davenport 1 bronze Skier X *Competing at X Games Aspen 2021

• DOB: 8/14/1994. Age 26 • 6 medals in 9 X Games appearances: 2 gold, 2 silver, 2 bronze (all SuperPipe). • Hasn’t finished worse than 4th in his past 7 X Games appearances; all 6 of his medals have been earned in that span. • Hopes to add a switch left double cork 1080 to his run in 2021. Has landed it multiple times to snow. It was the final double missing from his repertoire; he now has them in all four directions. • David Wise and Aaron Blunck are the only pipe skiers to land doubles in all 4 directions in a single pipe run during a contest. It powered Wise to X Games and Olympic gold in 2018. • On competing without fans: “Obviously, I love all of my friends and family coming into town. The support is unbelievable; you can truly feel it. I love hearing the crowd. But I’m excited, in a weird way, because I think my life is going to be a lot less stressful without trying to please everybody.”

• Working on a new video project called Hotdoggin' Hans, a spoof where Ferreira transforms himself into a cantankerous senior citizen well past his skiing prime but who still shreds a terrain park. He says it’s a cross between Uncle Drew and Bad Grandpa. Ferreira even hired a make-up artist to make him look old, which took three hours to apply every time. He shot the project with Matt Hobbs from Vital Films and had no support from sponsors. Dean Wilson did a motocross version of this concept in 2018. “80 year old Grandpa Earl” has 16.5 million views on YouTube. • Ferreira has a, er, habit of having fun on the mountain. • On December 9, 2020, Columbia Sportswear released this short athlete vignette of Ferreira on its YouTube page. • On Covid-19 and early days of quarantine: “I was at my mom’s house. We were hanging out, playing board games. It was a nice time. My mom’s always asking me to fix things around the house, and I never have time to get anything done. And finally, for once, I cleaned the whole garage for her.” • His parents are divorced, but he’s close with both. Lives with his mom, Delia, when he’s home. Mom owns a nail salon called The Red Spa. • Athletic prowess is in the genes. Alex’s father, Marcelo, played professional soccer for Argentina’s most successful team, River Plate. • Instagram: @alexferreiraski (23.3k followers)

Gratitude Mindset: Colby Stevenson Didn’t see that one coming. Rookies don’t win X Games Ski Slopestyle gold. Literally -- it never had happened before in the 20 Slopestyle comps held at X Games. Hell, they rarely medal at all. Rookies don’t win two gold medals at an X Games, either.

Colby Stevenson didn’t stick to the script.

Ski Knuckle Huck was the first men’s Ski contest at X Games 2020. Stevenson led start to finish for a surprise gold medal. That brought him some attention entering Slopestyle, but only five of 19 skiers would advance from Elimination, so his Cinderella success story looked to end early. The slipper still fit: He finished 1st in the Elimination, the only rookie to advance to the Final among the five who started.

Stevenson capped his dream weekend in the Slopestyle final. He was the most consistent and creative; his grabs were perfect and he used both sides of the shark fin. The win made him the first rookie to take Ski Slopestyle gold and the first rookie to win two gold at an X Games.

The only person who wasn’t surprised by his success in Aspen 2020 was Stevenson himself. “I definitely knew I could win, and the new format was appealing to me,” says the Park City native. “I think it’s really important for skiers to have a wide variety of things they’re good at, so yeah, I knew I had a good chance coming in. And with that new format, I ended up skiing the best I ever have.”

Stevenson credits his recent skiing success to the mindset he developed after surviving a life-threatening car accident in May 2016. On a drive from Mt. Hood, OR, to Park City, UT, he fell asleep behind the wheel and rolled his truck. He crushed his skull and broke his neck, facial bones and ribs.

“I almost died,” Colby says matter-of-factly. “I mean, the whole right side of my head is still caved in.” He was diagnosed with a traumatic brain injury and doctors initially told his parents they had no idea if he ever would recover. (See Colby’s dramatic X Games Being piece here. The crash and recovery is covered, and his mom, Carol, steals the segment.)

“There were a couple months where a shower was the highlight of my day,” he says. “So I kind of just started to see how amazing the little things were. Once I was able to get back to skiing, I was so filled with gratitude and thankfulness and felt like I had a superpower from that. Yeah, it sucks that it had to be something so traumatic for me to come to terms with something that was always inside of me.”

Now that Stevenson owns X Games Slopestyle gold, can he do it again? Topping the podium twice in the discipline is exceedingly rare. Sixteen different skiers have split the 21 gold medals in X Games Slopestyle history. Only three have won it more than once: Tanner Hall, Nick Goepper and Oystein Braaten.

Recent Men’s Ski Slopestyle Winners Andri Ragettli* Norway 2020 Colby Stevenson* Aspen 2020 Alex Hall* Aspen 2019 Henrik Harlaut* Aspen 2018 Oystein Braaten Aspen & Norway 2017 Jossi Wells Aspen 2016 Nick Goepper* Aspen 2013-2015 *Competing in X Games Aspen 2021 Ski Slopestyle

• DOB: Oct. 3, 1997; age 23 • 2 X Games appearances: gold, Aspen 2020 Ski Knuckle Huck and Slopestyle. Did not ski well at XG Norway 2020. • Check out his winning Slopestyle performance here and his Knuckle Huck debut here. • Only four times has the first-place finisher from Slopestyle Elimination gone on to strike gold. Before Stevenson, the last to do it was Andreas Hatveit in 2008 (Tanner Hall and Charles Gagnier also did it). • On his Aspen 2020 debut: “I remember knowing how bad I wanted to win it, but I was trying to force that thought out of my head because I know that can just get in the way of your ability sometimes.” • On his success in Knuckle Huck: “I’ve been going to this event in Sweden for the last four years called Kimbo Sessions, and they always build this really sick knuckle. So I knew that Knuckle Huck was going to be a sweet event for me.” • Life after X Games gold: “I definitely made more money, which I put in the stock market. I earned like 10,000 more followers on Instagram in that week, I remember that. And a lot of my friends came up to me and were, like, ‘Dude, you finally did it! We knew you had it in you.’”

• Following his car crash in May 2016, Stevenson was airlifted to the University of Utah, where he underwent a seven-hour craniectomy to relieve press on the brain. Doctors put him into a medically-induced coma for three days following surgery. • Colby’s mom said it was a miracle that he left the hospital walking and talking two weeks later. Despite the traumatic skull injury, Colby said he didn’t suffer a concussion. Said all he did during recovery was watch ski videos. • 8 months after the car crash he won his first World Cup in Seiser Alm, Italy (Jan. 2017). • Lives with mom and stepdad in Park City. Mom is a flight attendant. Father is a retired pilot. Says he frequently gets to fly in first class because of his mom. • Good friends with Evan McEachran, who earned silver behind him in Slopestyle at Aspen 2020. • Skipped the Dec. 2020 World Cups because of tendinitis under his right knee cap. • Tested positive for Covid-19 in Oct. 2020 but had no symptoms. Says he got it from his mother, who had some severe headaches but is fine now. His girlfriend also got it but had only mild flu symptoms. • August 2020 part from SLVSH • Instagram: @colby_stevenson (35,500 followers)