MOUNT SNOW, Vt. – The 2001 Winter X Slopestyle course was definitely an improvement from the previous year. Peter Line, although out for the competition with a chipped elbow, took a few runs through the course and said that "It seemed more fun this year and more tech with lots of rails."

Lower Inferno Run was transformed into a steep rolling hill with giant hips and tall rails. Most seemed to agree with Line that it was better this year. Yet, as with any contest there are bound to be grumblings. This year's gripe was that the landings were a bit flat.

In fact, a few riders bolted early to return home to film for next year's videos. Unfortunately they happened to be two of the sport's more popular riders – J.P. Walker and Jeremy Jones. Although Walker and Jones are not known for their contest prowess, their absence was certainly felt.

Kevin Jones snagged his ninth X Games medal.

It was immediately obvious who would be contending for the title. It just seemed that some riders were on a completely different level than some. Those riders were Todd Richards, Jussi Oksanen, Chad Otterstrom, and Kevin Jones. Their tricks just reeked of technicality. Their rail tricks were head and shoulders above the rest. They were landing some insane tricks like going backside lipslide down the kinked rail, switch rail slide 270 out, and switch frontside slides. It seems that rail riding has become the forum for the newest in snowboard progression.

Those guys were also ruling the kickers. Oksanen was stomping his backside-sevens and switch-fives all day. Otterstrom had the sickest corked out switch fives. Jones had his frontside-nines rolling like always. And Richards rocked super cab fives and switch nines. With all this tech flying around it seemed like whomever rode away standing up from all the tricks would take it.

Both Oksanen and Richards had solid first runs. Jones, however, had a hard time coming out of a few of his spins. He did land the sickest trick of the contest in his second run. It could only be described as a switch 440 to frontside slide to 270 out. What? Now, if he could only put a whole run together.

Jones was faster, higher, and more consistent than the rest of the field.

Richards managed to bump his score up even further with a super tight second run. His posted score of 88.67 seemed to be almost untouchable.

You know ESPN just has this knack for creating the perfect moment (think Hawk's 900). The whole event came down to one rider with a chance to challenge Richards. Guess who that rider was. Yup, Mr. Jones.

Jones dropped in and immediately threw a nose-press 180 out and set himself up perfectly for that switch multi-twirl to lipslide thing mentioned earlier. I'm sure he'll have some witty name for that trick soon like "macgilla killa" or something. The rest blurred together in a haze of perfectly executed twirls and completely stomped landings. There were sevens, nines, and threes and even another frontside 270 lipslide on the last rail. Not bad.

When his score lit up at 89.60, a full point higher than Richards, no one was super surprised.

"It was sick to see him (Jones) push the progression of the sport in a contest as big as the X Games," said Richards. "No, I'm not the first (to pull it). "I saw Jeffy Anderson do it not that long ago and I figured that I needed to learn it too," proclaimed the modest Jones.

On winning he said, "I decided to abort my normal strategy, which is to fall a lot and look what happened."

Another Gold for the most decorated medalist in all of Winter X history is what happened.

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