Sebastien Toutant won the battle of the triple corkers to take the men’s slopestyle gold medal at the Winter X Games in Tignes today.

With Mark McMorris, Torstein Horgmo, Peetu Piiroinen and Stale Sandbech all throwing their own variations of the monstrously technical trick into their slopestyle runs, the competition was close.

But in the end Toots’ smooth style and superior rail game won out.

Interestingly, no-one had even attempted a triple in qualification, and there was some speculation that the kickers weren’t actually built big enough for riders to get the rotations around.

But the organisers needn’t have worried – these guys are so comfortable throwing the headline-grabbing trick that they could probably do it off the side of the piste these days.

Certainly, it seems that to win at this level these days you probably need one of these in your arsenal.

To those who worry that this inexorable move towards bigger, more flippy spins is destroying the ‘style’ aspect of snowboarding, the fact that it was steeze and rail-riding that separated the top two will come as a relief.

As will Seb’s statement in the post-match press conference. When asked when the ‘quadruple cork’ would become the standard he answered:

I have no intention to try a quad cork, I think there’s still lots of doubles to try and it’s good to get the style on them and concentrate on that. Maybe we leave the quad corks to the skiers…

That said, there’s no doubt that it was the extra flip that separated the men from the boys today – or rather the podium finishers from the rest.

And while Seb Toots sprung a surprise by breaking up the predicted McMorris-Horgmo battle for first place, it was no surprise that it took a triple cork to do so.

You can read the full blow-by-blow account of the final (and find out what happened to Torstein) on our live-blog here, and watch the video highlights of the event here.

X GAMES 2013 TIGNES MEN’S SLOPESTYLE RESULTS