Park City’s Julia Krass wins silver medal in the first-ever world championship big air ski event

Park City • There were no rookie nerves, no shaking of the boots. And there were plenty of reasons to be riddled with nerves, plenty of reasons to overthink. After all, this was her first-ever attempt at a real big air ski competition, and it just so happened that it came in her adopted hometown, in front of family and friends, in front of an estimated 6,000 spectators, in the 2019 FIS world championships.

Julia Krass wasn't rattled. She wouldn’t allow herself to be. The 21-year-old slopestyle skier blocked it all out.

“Standing up top,” the 21-year-old said, “you kind of have to zone in and pretend they’re not there.”

Krass, competing for a world title, went out and proved that the inaugural big air ski competition in the world championships would be remembered, in part, because of her. Krass earned a silver medal Saturday evening at Canyons Village in Park City, by throwing her best tricks high into the night sky, because that’s the point of big air.

You just go for it. You go with what’s got you to contending. Krass went with her signature double-cork 1080, which carried her. After a sloppy second landing, one she later managed to shake off, her third and final jump propelled her into medal contention. But she had a lengthy wait at the bottom of the hill, watching the world’s best athletes flip and twist and try to knock her off the podium.

“It was definitely pretty nerve-wracking,” she said.

Well, yeah. Everything before the jump is easy compared to waiting it out below with a spot on the bench. Eventually, after the last big air high-flyer, Krass earned a silver, an early pinnacle to her young career. Ski big air was included for the first time in these world championships and will make its Olympic debut at the 2022 Olympics in Beijing. Long a staple of the Winter X Games, big air ski and snowboard has been a highlight, a reason for fans to gasp for a few seconds as incredible feats are achieved mid-air before the long fall back down to the icy snow.

“I’ve never done an event at night like this,” Krass said. “It was so cool to be under the lights.”

Fittingly, a few minutes after the silver medal was hers, she was stopped by a few fans who held out a pen and paper asking for an autograph.

Big air’s inclusion now presents the world’s top slopestyle skiers with another avenue to win, but also a stiffer test. Unlike a lengthy slopestyle course broken up by jumps and rails, big air is just one massive moment that needs to be as perfect as possible.

“It’s honestly, substituting a more ‘PC’ word, you’ve got to have the guts,” said Nick Goepper, two-time Olympic medalist in slopestyle, who finished 10th in the men’s final after three rough landings. “Because with big air, that’s what it’s all about, it’s just being able to go big and be able to put down a really hard trick that you never do regularly. Slopestyle, it’s a little more conservative, I would say, but with big air, you’ve really got to go against your inhibition and just do it.”

Park City’s Alex Hall, fresh off slopestyle gold in the X Games a week ago, finished fourth in the men’s big air event Saturday night. Still wearing the lucky sweater his mom gave him at Christmas last year, Hall wasn’t bummed to barely miss out on a world championship podium in his hometown in front of thousands and thousands of fans.

“This was dope,” he said. “I really didn’t think this many people were going to come, but it was awesome.”