By Peter Mertz
ASPEN, the United States, Jan. 26 (Xinhua) -- Danny Chi, the director of communications for ESPN's X-Games, sung high of the developement of snowboard sports in China after Chinese women's snowboarder Cai Xuetong grabbed a coveted bronze medal at the 24th annual X-Games in the women's snowboard superpipe event.
"Winning gold might not just be the best achievement - but introducing a new move is what brings respect from competitors," Chin said.
The 25-year-old Cai, native of Harbin, nailed her third and final run Saturday night - after falling twice before - to collect her third medal since 2016, followed closely by fellow Chinese competitor Liu Jiayu, who took fourth.
"I was surprised I took third," said Cai, who had to "overcome" adversity after the two falls to score big when it mattered most.
American Chloe Kim, of South Korean descent, won the women's superpipe gold medal, her fifth X-Games gold, followed by Spain's Queralt Castellet.
Kim was the Olympic gold medalist in the women's halfpipe at the 2018 PyeongChang Games.
Cai's teammate Liu narrowly missed a medal, but is famous for winning China's only winter Olympic snowboarding medal - a silver behind Kim at the 2018 Games.
"They are not just China's dynamic duo, but double pioneers in the sport of snowboarding," Chi said.
"We hope to have more younger Chinese women competitors for the 2022 Games. China is getting stronger every day," he added.
Chi called both Cai and Liu national role models for China, who gain international prowess in a relatively short time. China's first X-Games competitors appeared at the 2010 Olympic Games in Vancouver.
"I must say these two women got really good, very quickly," said Chi, whose father is from Shanghai and mother from Beijing.
"They trained like Chinese national athletes - they are the first to show up at the pipe to practice, and the last to leave," Chi said, noting that snowboarding was not the first sport for either of them.
Liu, from Hegang, Heilongjiang province, switched from martial arts to snowboarding at 11 and Cai's first sport was gymnastics.
"For China's next generation of snowboarders, to mimic and follow both of these riders is huge for the snowboarding world," said Chi, who was a teenager in Utah when the "snowboarding movement" hit in the 1980s.
Chi will spearhead ESPN's two X-Games events in China in 2020. With the 2022 Winter Olympic Games coming, he said "It is a government priority" to groom a field of Olympic caliber athletes in a short period of time.
"They are hoping to successfully bring up 300 million new (skiing and skating) participants in China," he said.
Chi especially recognized the elevated sportsmanship that accompanies the X-Games philosophy.
"The whole nature of the sport is about pioneering the next trick, doing something no one has done before," he said, adding that no other sport has competitors cheering on each other as much as snowboarding features.
