After a cloudy and cold morning the sun reared it's head for a quick peak at the woman who is truly setting the bar for all women when it comes to laying it down in the park. Tara Dakides was riding on a mission with only one thing in mind, to bring home that gold, baby. Jana Meyen missed Tara's first by five points and took silver in front of everybody's girl Barrett Christy who brought home the bronze.

Tara's win brought her Winter X medal total to six, with only one silver, at last years Winter X Slopestyle contest. Barrett's bronze brings her Winter X medal total to a record ten. Jana was only one of two women to successfully ride the "shark's fin" rail and she ended up being a full nine points in front of Barrett at the end of the whole thing.

A lot of girls were having trouble with the top of the course as some flat spots and rails made it tough for them to keep speed into the booter section. Most of the ladies were stuck in the world of the 50-50 when it came to the rails but both Tara and Jana were boardsliding the kinks and doing variations on the fun box.

From left to right - Jana, Tara and Barrett.

Tara's winning run took her through the course with much speed and style with clean boardslides, a half-cab to fun box to 180 out, and then a big solid backflip on the last showtime booter.

"Yeah I'm alright with it (the second run), I'm glad I got at least one solid run in there. My first and my last run were yucky."

Going into her third and final run she could have really done anything because of her lead, but slow conditions kept her from being really happy with her performance.

"I wanted to do a really good last run and I wanted to do a really sick trick but my speed was gone," said Dakides. "I don't know maybe the course was warming up."

Tara was one of two ladies to boardslide the rails.

One thing she was happy with was the design of the course.

"It's insane, it's a lot of fun and it has a lot of good rails in it. Gunny and the boys did a really good job."

Jana, along with Tara, was the only girl to ride well on the shark's fin rail and her silver-winning run included a boardslide to 180 out, a switch frontside 360 and a big clean grabbing frontside 180 off the showtime booter at the bottom.

Meyen, a native of Big Bear Lake, Calif., was happy with her runs.

"I usually hate contests and never go, but this one was fun," said Meyen. "I'm stoked to be here. I'm just trying to have fun here and do my thing."

Jana flying high on her pretty board.

Everybody's girl Barrett Christy was riding well in her bronze grabbing run, nailing the signature "Barrett Roll." On her last run she blew out on the landing of the showtime booter and packed her face. After the event she had a mouse on her right eye and a bag of snow pressed to her face to ease the pain. Needless to say she was in no mood to talk after the comp.

All in all the girls rode hard today and the level of progression gets notched up higher each year. The fact that the ladies are getting upside down and stomping big lippers or boardsliding kinked rails marks the state of affairs in today's women's slopestyle. Go girls go!

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