Snowboarding at the 2010 Vancouver Winter Games:

Like the women’s event, this was held in fog and torrential rain. Austrian Andreas Prommegger, who had dominated the event all season, was the fastest in qualifying, but was surprisingly defeated by American Chris Klug in the first elimination round, although Klug was later put out by Mathieu Bozzetto (FRA) in the quarter-finals when he crashed on his second run. Joining Bozzetto in the semi-finals were Benjamin Karl (AUT), Stanislav Detkov (RUS) and Canadian [Jacey-Jay Anderson].

In the first of the semi finals, Karl won both his runs against Bozzetto fairly easily, his winning margin being 2.58 seconds. The second semi-final was much closer, with Anderson leading by 0.28 seconds after the first run. As Detkov tried to close the gap on the second run he fell halfway down the course, and eventually finished 1.72 seconds behind. This brought the final down to Karl against Andersson, the two pre-Games favorites. Anderson had won the 2009 World Championship and was second in the World Cup standings in 2009-10, trailing Karl, who had won the World Cup in 2007-08.

The contests for the medals were no less dramatic. In the bronze medal match, Bozzetto won the first run by 0.96 seconds from Detkov, both competitors making errors on the course. Unfortunately there was a problem with the sound at the starting gate for the second run, so the competitors didn’t hear the normal bleeps. Detkov mistimed his start and crashed into the gates before they had opened, effectively ending the contest. In the final, Karl built up a reasonable lead after Anderson had made a number of minor errors to take a 0.76 second lead into the second run. However, despite the same problems with the start gate that had affected the bronze medal contest, Anderson timed his start to perfection and started to reel back Karl. With the finishing line in sight, Anderson finally overtook Karl and finished 0.35 seconds ahead to take the gold medal.

Questions were raised about the necessity for the 5th-8th place contests. In one of the classification semi-finals, Rok Flander (SLO) did not start, meaning his opponent Simon Schoch (SUI) simply went through the starting gate and promptly stopped twice, just to register the win. It was little different in the contest for 7th / 8th place when, with Flander not starting, Chris Klug went through the gate and promptly stopped after his first run. To the cheers of the crowd Klug went down the course on his second run in a solo display.