X Games: Alexis Sablone wins gold in women’s Skateboard Street
Alexis Sablone only needed her first run in the final round to take home the gold medal in the women’s Skateboard Street competition at the X Games on Friday.
Sporting a black T-shirt and jeans with a navy blue baseball cap worn backward, Sablone took the top score of the day on her first run in the final round. The run included a string of perfectly executed kickflips before perhaps her best move of the day — a front side 50-50 grind down a sloping picnic table.
Sablone began the run with perhaps her best series of the day. Starting on the roof, she landed a kickflip off a gap roughly 10 feet above the course, followed by another kickflip into a wedge and a jump.
“It took me until yesterday to even try it. I kept going full speed at it and turning at the last second because you’re down on a ramp and it’s way taller than you,” Sablone said.
The field was littered with the sport’s top female competitors. Marisa Dal Santo won gold last year. Brazilian Leticia Bufoni took home silver. Elissa Steamer, 35, is a three-time gold medalist and considered a pioneer in the sport.
But Sablone set the tone early, and kept the rest of the field playing catch up. With a score of 85.66 points on her best run, Sablone maintained the lead into the final round, with Bufoni firmly in second and Dal Santo clinging to third.
But in the final round, Rachel Reinhard scored the second-highest score of the day, bumping Dal Santo from the top three. Reinhard had missed the competition in 2009 and 2010 whle recovering from a knee injury. She finished seventh in her return last year.
VIDEO: X Games Los Angeles 2012
With Duran Duran’s ‘Girls on Film’ blaring in the background, Reinhard put together her best run of the day with a series that included a double kickflip, a front side boardslide and a front side nosegrind.
Moments later, Bufoni reclaimed second place with an impressive run of her own. Dal Santo finished fourth, Lacy Baker was fifth and Steamer wrapped up the event in sixth.
Sablone is the only skateboarder to have finished in the top two each of the last four years, winning in 2010 and finishing second last year and in 2009.
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