Aerials, Men

Belarus had won the men’s aerials competition at the last two editions of the Olympic Games, and defending champion Anton Kushnir was back in the hopes of snagging a second gold medal. The other podium finishers in 2014, Australia’s David Morris and China’s Jia Zongyang, were also in PyeongChang to vie once more for medals, but of the three only Morris had medaled at one of the last two editions of the World Championships (bronze in 2017). From the perspective of that tournament, Qi Guangpu, also of China, was a contender, as he was the 2013 and 2015 World Champion and 2011 and 2017 runner-up. He had also come in fourth in Sochi. American Jonathon Lillis was the reigning World Champion.

That Lillis won the qualifying round was not particularly surprising, but much more shocking was that Kushnir failed to advance beyond the second qualification stage, falling just 0.45 points shy of making the cut off. The final was divided into three runs, each of which was independent of the other and after which the bottom three competitors would be eliminated. Qi was on top after the first run but Morris, who attempted the same trick, did not nail his execution and was forced to bow out. In the following run, however, it was Qi who was surprisingly eliminated, while Lillis also faltered and exited the tournament. That left Jia as the last remaining favorite and, had the event been determined by the best of three runs, he would have won gold on the strength of his score in the second round.

As it was, however, Jia was edged out in the final run by Oleksandr Abramenko of Ukraine, whose victory stunned viewers, as he was relatively unknown despite competing in his fourth edition of the Games. It was Ukraine’s third gold medal at the Winter Games since it began competing independently in 1994 and its first medal of any color in freestyle skiing. Jia settled for second, while Russian Ilya Burov took home bronze.