Kaitlyn Farrington has taken gold in the Sochi halfpipe beating Australian Torah Bright by only 0.25 points. Kelly Clark rounded out the podium with bronze. All three finalists had rough first runs, with Bright and Clark crashing out in what looked like very trying conditions – the smallest error was washing off any speed the riders had and making it difficult to maintain a lot of height in the runs.

Farrington’s winning run included a back 7 and back 9 – she came through relatively smoothly. Torah’s wasn’t the the most technically demanding run but was performed with a lot of style and was adjusted to the conditions. It included a mctwist, air to fakie, cab 7, front 5 and alley oop. You can watch the run over here.

Her finish finally puts Australia onto the medal tally board and she equals the result of Australia’s best winter Olympian to date, Dale Begg-Smith. She has another opportunity to podium in the Boardercross on Sunday (16th). The full womens halfpipe results are below.

Womens Halfpipe Finals

1. Kaitlyn Farrington 91.75
2. Torah Bright 91.50
3. Kelly Clark 90.75
4. Hannah Teter 90.50
5. Rana Okada 85.50
6. Xuetong Cai 84.25
7. Sophie Rodriguez 79.50
8. Shuang Li 73.25
9. Jiayu Liu 68.25
10. Mirabelle Thovex 67.00
11. Queralt Castellet 61.75
12. Ursina Haller 48.75