Sage Kotsenburg, hailed by many as the ‘rider’s rider’ and at best an interesting one to watch in the qualifications just blew the lid off the snowboarding world by steaming away with the first medal in Sochi and the first Olympic slopestyle gold ever.

In a field packed full of triples, 1440s and even a backside triple 1620 with the last hit of the day, Sage’s double grabs, tripods and weird tweaks won the judges over. Many might criticise them for skipping over the technicality of Max Parrot or Stale Sandbech’s runs, but for us other than having a Brit on the podium this was the best result we could have imagined.

Only last night we watched a video where Sage admits to shitting his pants whilst snowboarding four times; now many people watching will now equate Kotsenburg’s style and relaxed attitude with snowboarding in the same way that Shaun White has been placed on a pedestal for over ten years now.

And it looked like it was his calm and composure that helped him to the podium, many of the other riders buckled under the pressure but Sage smiled top-to-bottom and never looked like he wasn’t having fun. His run included a 1620 japan grab, 180 on to 360 off on the flat tube, tripod to back 180 melon on the cannon and double corks with his trademark ‘holy crail’ grab.

Stale Sandbech took second place with arguably the tech-est run of the day, hitting a cab 1260 then a front 1440 leading into a back triple 1440 in his kicker section and finishing off with a rad penguin slide across the ‘finish line;’ that probably clinched it for him.

Mark McMorris was given the break he needed on his last run, getting a cab triple underflip, front dub cork 10 and back triple 14, all with a broken rib! After stacking the front dub cork on his first run he did well to get the medal he was predicted, though he still looked a little disappointed with the colour.

That was the same jump run Billy Morgan was aiming for, but after catching an edge coming out of a rodeo off of the cannon rail on his first run and slipping out on the front double 10 on his second he unfortunately didn’t get a complete score in the bag, ending up in 10th place.

Jamie Nicholls fared slightly better, coming in at sixth, equaling the best British Olympic result on snow ever, he should be proud. The run he put down had a cab 1440, switch back 9 and a backside triple 14 and had him in bronze medal position for most of the event, but he unfortunately couldn’t get his second rail run down and wasn’t able to attempt his planned switch backside 1260 on the second jump, which surely would have got him a medal?

Nike suggested they might give Jamie the sum of 100 grand (not sure in which currency though) if he grabbed the gold, presumably Sage will get the same deal? That’s one hell of a 10% rule if he gets it in time for the bar tab tonight!

He was heard saying that today’s riding was the highest standard he’d ever seen in a contest, we’d agree with him on that count.

Sven Thorgen was the guy who finally bumped Jamie of the top four, spinning twelves in all different directions, then Max Parrot pushed him further down. Maxence’s huge bag of tricks couldn’t save him as the judges were obviously marking down super-hucked spins and standard grabs after witnessing Sage Kotsenburg’s holy crail grab. The X Games Parrot became and ex-Parrot.

And that was that for the men’s slopestyle, after months of hype and discussion it was the Aimee Fuller look-a-like from Park City that did it. Congrats Sage; the judging decisions will go on for days, but we think it was well-deserved. Hopefully Terje was watching eh?

Join us again for the women’s slopestyle semis and final tomorrow morning, we’re off to watch Cornwall’s coast get smashed to pieces! Here’s the final results: