US make history by winning first ever Winter Olympics mixed team aerials in freestyle skiing

Updated 10/02/2022 at 14:17 GMT

Justin Schoenefeld's final jump gave China a target of 136.29 points to be crowned champions at the Winter Olympics, but they fell 14 points short as they settled for silver. Canada took bronze, but it is the USA who go into the history book as the first ever winners of the competition at a Winter Games. Christopher Lillis' exhilarating final jump for the Americans proved to be the turning point.

'This is insane!' - Lillis nails outrageous jump as USA go on to win team aerials

The United States won the first ever mixed team aerials in freestyle skiing in Beijing.

China were the favourites going into the competition, but they had to settle for silver, while Canada took bronze.

The American trio won by 14 points with Justin Schoenefeld executing their final jump to secure a points total which proved to be out of reach for the Chinese team.

Beijing 2022

‘Drama! Drama! Drama!’ – Re-live Gu’s remarkable Olympic Games

00:02:34

23/02/2022 at 15:00

Beijing 2022 Olympic Games: Schedule, big names, key events and more

A new event at the Olympics, the mixed team aerials sees teams represented by three skiers. Each trio must feature at least one skier of each gender, with all countries in the final choosing to use two men and one woman.

Judges score the teams in three categories: air, form and landing. Air takes into account a skier’s takeoff from the jump, judging its power and control, as well as the height and distance travelled.

The form section of scoring is all about what the athlete does when they are in the air, while the landing marks are based on how they… erm… land. Once those three elements are judged, the score is multiplied by the degree of difficulty to give a skier their total for the jump.

Six teams started the final, but only four would progress after the first round, with China dominating to top the leaderboard with a score of 336.89, after former double world champion Qui Guanpu guided them through with the final jump of the round.

Belarus crashed out at the bottom of the table, while the ROC also made an early exit after finishing just 4.65 points behind Switzerland.

After a short break, the teams re-emerged into the floodlit arena at Genting Snow Park.

China set the early pace in the final, before Pirmin Werner brought Switzerland back into contention as he executed five twists and three flips with a difficulty level of 5.

Every jump seemed to inspire the next athlete to perform even better, with Miha Fontaine stepping up to score 116.48 for Team Canada.

The ever increasing quality did not faze America’s Christopher Lillis, who stepped up to execute five full twists and three full flips with maximum difficulty, leading to cries in the Eurosport commentary box of the routine being one of the best tricks we’ve ever seen in Olympic competition” to land a huge score of 135.

Speaking of pressure, it did get to Jia Zongyang as he scored 96.02 after hitting the deck following his landing.

It proved to be the key moment in determining the colour of medal China would be taking home.

In the final round of jumps, Canada ensured they would take a medal by leapfrogging Switzerland with a score of 290.98.

Over to Justin Schoenefeld. With a back-double-full-full-full routine in his mind, he stepped up to deliver the most important jump of his career, and land a score of 114.48 for the USA - taking their total to 338.34.

Qi Guangpu would have to beat Lillis’ jump-of-the-day with a score of 136.29 if China were to snatch the gold medal with the final routine of the competition.

He fell short, scoring a highly respectable 122.17, which meant gold for China, but a place in the history books for the USA.

- - -

Watch every moment of Olympic Winter Games Beijing 2022 on discovery+

Beijing 2022