Americans grab gold, silver as Canada's Moffatt finishes 9th in men's freeski slopestyle

American Alexander Hall struck gold in the men's freestyle skiing slopestyle final, while teammate Nicholas Goepper repeated as a silver medallist on Wednesday in Zhangjiakou, China.

Sweden's Jesper Tjader grabbed bronze with a top score of 85.35.

Canada's Max Moffatt, the lone Canadian in the field, finished ninth with a top score of 70.40.

Moffatt, 23, had the second-best run of the final round, and steadily improved every time he was up. He scored 47.18 on the first and 65.31 on his second to sit in seventh going into the final run.

WATCH | Hall snags gold in men's freeski slopestyle:

The Guelph, Ont., native finished 11th in the qualifying round where only the top 12 advanced to the medal event.

Teammates Teal Harle and Evan McEachran, who finished fifth and sixth in the slopestyle at the 2018 Pyeongchang Games, failed to make the final round. Fellow Canadian Edouard Therriault fell one spot short of qualifying.

The 23-year-old Moffatt, who is making his Olympic debut in Beijing, finished 20th in the big air competition earlier in the Games.

Coming into Beijing, he had finished 11th in the slopestyle at the 2021 world championships, along with having won a silver medal at the 2022 X Games in January.

On the other hand, it's another medal for Hall, who earned bronze at the 2021 world championships and another bronze last month at the X Games.

Hall stole the show on a frigid day at the Genting Snow Park, where the temperature was around minus 20 degrees Celsius. The 23-year-old who was born in Alaska, grew up in Switzerland and now lives in Utah, had a few did-that-just-happen moments as the seventh competitor to take the course. His opening run drew a score of 90.01.

He skimmed off the top of a bump and did an impressive trick on one feature — a risky and unorthodox move that he's been working on in practice but didn't know if it was going to score well with the judges (it did). That was just a warmup act for his midair spin on the last jump where he was able to stop his momentum and basically turn back around.

The American men have captured six of nine Olympic medals since the event made its debut in 2014. Goepper has three of them, adding Wednesday to his silver from the 2018 Pyeongchang Games and bronze from the 2014 Sochi Olympics.