NORTH Vancouver's Spencer O'Brien shredded her way to victory in women's slopestyle at the TTR World Snowboarding Championships on Sunday in Oslo, Norway.
O'Brien scored 84.4 points in her final run, topping the 78.9 points put up by 2012 Winter X-Games champion Jamie Anderson earlier in the competition. Finland's Enni Rukajaervi was third with 74.5 points.
O'Brien fell on her first two runs of the event but pulled out all the stops in her third and final pass, laying down tricks such as a backside 540, switch backside 540 and frontside 720 combo as she negotiated the jumps and rails of the slopestyle course.
"I was very nervous, I (fell) my first two runs and was thinking of doing a safety run but decided to just go for it," O'Brien said in a Canada Snowboard release. "I'm really happy I did, because I'm super proud of the run I did."
A Vancouver Island native, O'Brien has racked up a number of impressive results since she began competing in 2005, including bronze and silver medals at the Winter X-Games. Earlier this month she claimed the Dew Cup Championship, a prestigious, season-long award given to the athlete with the highest combined results at Winter Dew Tour events.
In 2011 ski and snowboard slopestyle were added as medal sports for the 2014 Olympic Winter Games in Sochi, Russia. A typical slopestyle event involves skiers or snowboarders pulling off tricks as they travel downhill and negotiate features such as jumps, bumps and rails.
