Jamie Anderson uses bronze medal finish to highlight climate change and POW

PARK CITY, Utah -- Jamie Anderson knew what she had to do. The two-time slopestyle snowboarding Olympic champion considered dropping out of the FIS Snowboard, Freestyle Ski and Freeski World Championships but realized she could use the event for a greater good and get out a message near and dear to her heart.

Anderson did that in a big way, taking home the bronze in slopestyle at the first FIS world championships contest of her career. An hour after it was slated to begin, Sunday’s scheduled final was canceled due to high winds on the course and medals were instead awarded based on Saturday’s qualification results. Kiwi Zoi Sadowski Synnott won gold with a score of 91.75 and Norway’s Silje Norendal took silver with an 88.75, both earned on their first runs, while Anderson’s second-run score of 87.25 was good for bronze.

“Yesterday I did treat qualification like a final,” Anderson said. “I really wanted to put down my best run and I went for it and unfortunately fell on my first run on the bottom jump, and on my second run I had a little bit of a sketch on the rail, so I was surprised to even be in third, but I was really stoked on the medal and I’m thankful to get bronze.”

And Anderson’s message?

“I decided to use this event to speak up for our global community of snowboarders and to shine a light on how important our environment is, especially as snow athletes.”

The South Lake Tahoe, California, native was ready to boycott the contest after the International Ski Federation (FIS) president Gian-Franco Kasper gave a recent interview to Swiss newspaper Tages-Anzeiger in which he referred to “so-called” climate change and praised dictatorships.

For Jamie's response and the rest of the story -> https://www.teamusa.org/News/2019/February/10/Jamie-Anderson-Wins-Worlds-Slopestyle-Bronze-Uses-Plat...