Olympic gold medallist Toutant taking laid-back approach to snowboard season

“Of course you have to be talented and you have to spend a lot of time training on your board. But if your core is strong, if your legs are strong, you can snowboard longer. And with more stability, you can spin faster, you can pop higher, so that (stability ball work) definitely pays off.”

Toutant demonstrated his core strength when he soared into the sky in Pyeongchang in February and landed a backside triple cork 1620 (four rotations) to lock up the big air gold medal in the discipline’s Olympic debut.

The L’Assomption, Que., native also competed in slopestyle, finishing 11th in the same event that Canadians Max Parrot and Mark McMorris won silver and bronze, respectively.

Winning the big air gold gave Toutant increased fame outside snowboarding circles. He spent his first few months after returning from South Korea doing media interviews, promotional appearances, and throwing out a ceremonial first pitch at a Blue Jays game in May — right before fellow Canadian James Paxton of the Mariners tossed his no-hitter at Rogers Centre.

“It was nice,” Toutant said of the added attention following his return. “A gold medal (speaks) to anyone. A lot of people don’t understand our sport and sometimes when you win an X Games medal or something, people from action sports know how big that is and how hard it is to win a medal, but not everyone gets it.

“A gold medal puts more (exposure) on the sport. It’s a big thing, it’s a big accomplishment and everyone knows it.”

As an Olympic champ heading into this snowboard season — which began earlier this month with a World Cup stop in New Zealand and continues in Italy on Saturday and Sunday — Toutant can afford to take things a bit easier this year.

Gone is the pressure of maintaining high results week after week in order to make an Olympic team, giving him flexibility to add new tricks to his arsenal as well as focus on some more creative projects.

“I’m probably going to do the biggest competitions of the season, maybe like five or six at the most,” said Toutant, who was not among the committed competitors for the Modena World Cup stop this weekend. “I’m working on other stuff, some filming projects on the side.

“I want to film a snowboarding movie and I’m going to be starting a web series this year so it’s nice coming out of the Olympics to have some time.”

While he has goals for himself outside of snowboarding, Toutant is not ruling out a return to the Olympics in 2022.

He’ll be nearing 30 by then and competing in a sport that’s dominated by younger riders (American Red Gerard was just 17 when he won gold in slopestyle in Pyeongchang), but he said his motivation for another medal is too hard to shake.

“It’s still four years (away) but by winning the big air in Pyeongchang and coming close in slopestyle, it left me hungry for the next one,” Toutant said. “That’s definitely one of my goals to go back and try to defend my title in big air, and if I could win a medal in slopestyle that would be the cherry on top of the cake so we’ll see how it goes (in the next few years).

“For now my body feels good. I want to compete, I want to do better. I don’t feel like I’ve done everything I can in snowboarding and it would be nice to go for one more.”

Melissa Couto, The Canadian Press

by Canadian Press

Olympic gold medallist Toutant taking laid-back approach to snowboard season

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