Alexander Hall, born on September 21, 1998, and known as "A Hall", is an American freestyle skier who competes internationally as a member of the US Freeskiing Slopestyle team. Hall is a dominant slopestyle skier who captured gold in the event at the 2022 Winter Olympics. He is known for his creative and unique approach to the sport, pushing boundaries and inspiring others.
Early Life and Influences
Born in Fairbanks, Alaska, Alex Hall moved to Switzerland at a young age, where his American father and Italian mother both worked as university professors. Hall credits much of his rising enthusiasm for the sport to attending Zurich’s annual freestyle.ch ski event with friends and older brother, Aldo, a snowboarder who also served as his first videographer. He returned to the United States at age 16 to finish high school at the Winter Sports School in Park City.
Hall recalls being inspired by old freeski videos around the age of 10, loving the free and epic nature of the sport.
Career Highlights
Hall made his senior Olympic debut at PyeongChang 2018 where he finished in a creditable 16th place in slopestyle. He placed sixteenth in Slopestyle at the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, and first in Slopestyle and eighth in Big Air at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. In 2021, he flashed the potential of what he could do in Beijing, winning bronze at the World Championships. Shortly before Beijing, Hall claimed his fifth World Cup win in the Mammoth slopestyle.
Hall added another feather to his cap by winning his first World Cup crystal globe in 2023/24 in Big Air thanks in part to victories in Beijing and Tignes. He achieved success in both Big Air and slopestyle on the World Cup circuit in the next four-year Olympic cycle and took slopestyle bronze at the 2021 World Championships in Aspen, Colorado. Hall is basically the perfect image of a free skier. Hall is both active in competition and in filming.
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In 2019, Hall won his first gold medal at the X Games in the slopestyle event. At the X Games Aspen 2021, Hall received bronze in men's ski big air. He was the first male skier to medal in three disciplines at the same X Games in 2022. Overall, he’s won gold at the Norway 2020 Knuckle Huck, gold at the Aspen 2020 Big Air, gold at the 2019 Aspen slopestyle, gold at the 2019 Aspen slopestyle, silver at the Norway 2020 slopestyle, bronze at the Aspen 2022 slopestyle, bronze at the Aspen 2022 knuckle huck, and bronze at the Aspen 2021 big air.
Hall experienced an important break-out moment during the 2015 Dumont Cup (USA) by placing seventh in this Slopestyle event organized by the Association of Freeskiing Professionals (AFP). He joined the U.S. Ski & Snowboard Team at age 17, first joining the Development (Rookie) team before being promoted a year later to the Pro team.
Olympic Gold in Beijing 2022
Having only finished eighth in Big Air, Hall raised the bar in slopestyle to take gold in the Chinese capital. "It definitely was the best slopestyle run I've ever done,” Hall said. “Mainly because it embodied everything I love about skiing and how I approach skiing. I didn't fade away from that to try and maybe get bigger scores or something.
The picturesque setting at Genting Snow Park provided the perfect stage for such artistry, with its challenging sections of rails, ramps and pipes earning rave reviews from Winter Olympians-not to mention the “shred shed” built to mimic a Great Wall watch tower.
“He definitely had different ideas for his rail run, different ideas for his jump run, but he was like, ‘Ah, screw it,’” Stevenson said. “Even if it’s not going to be number one, he’s just more doing it for himself.
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“The creativity and uniqueness are being recognized,” said Nick Goepper, a fellow American who took silver. “As soon as you max out what you can possibly do athletically, spinning around in circles, that's when the sport starts to get stale and sanitized.”
Hall rode two long rails at the start of his gold-medal-winning run, figuring their sheer length alone would be rewarded. He launched off the second jump backwards and completed a 720 rotation before “buttering” his ski noses into the slope to perform an additional 540. And he capped it off with a 1080 pretzel, defying physics by reversing direction at 900 degrees and completing the final 180 degrees in the opposite direction.
“He just thinks outside the box. He’s not afraid to do something that nobody ever’s done, just because he thinks he can.” teammate Colby Stevenson gushed after Hall’s 90.01-point first run in the final held up for the gold medal.
Hall had previously competed at the Games in 2018, but did not medal. Four years ago, at PyeongChang 2018, Hall was a 19-year-old surprise inclusion in the USA freeski team and finished in the middle of the slopestyle field.
“That’s one of the beautiful things about our sport,” said Hall after pairing two scores of 46 and 48 (out of 50) for a huge combined score of 94. “It’s really competitive but we all are supportive of each other. There are no enemies.
Speaking to reporters in the mixed zone, his fingers nearly frozen from clutching the American flag that was draped around his shoulders, the Salt Lake City resident declared 11 times in five minutes that he was “stoked” about winning gold.
Then he said this: “It sounds really cliché, but I’ve always told myself: ‘If I’m not having fun doing it, then there’s really no reason to do it,’ so I might as well do what brings me all this joy.
🥇🥈 for USA in Freestyle Skiing Beijing 2022 | Men's Slopestyle final highlights
Sponsors
Hall currently rides for Spyder, Faction Skis, POC Sports, Panda Poles, and Monster Energy Drink. Hall currently rides for Samsung, Moncler, Faction Skis, Monster Energy, Dalbello, Look Bindings, and Wells Lamont. He secured initial sponsors that included Surface Skis, Panda Poles, Shred Optics, and Slytech.
Off the Slopes
Off the slopes, Alex Hall relaxes by surfing, golfing, tennis, fly fishing, and occasionally, ceramics. Ski Team member Hunter Hess and filmer Owen Dahlberg. The threesome has produced several full-feature edits, along with creating a biweekly, candid short series, Magma Mondays. Hall's 2014 Newschooler's SuperUnknown clip was a collaboration with his brother.
Hall's Philosophy
Speaking about the Olympics Hall said: “I have a focus on the Olympics for sure, but I don’t want it to live too much in my mind. Last time around, I let it get to me more than I should have,” said Hall ahead of Sunday's X Games freeski slopestyle finals. “It made things less fun. This time I told myself not to think about it too much. “I don’t want to let it get to me,” added the humble man of the moment who can go big when needed. “I want to have fun along the way.
Lee Jin-man/APBorn in Alaska but raised in Switzerland, where his American father and Italian mother both worked as university professors, Hall attributes his free-spirited mindset to a childhood devoid of the intense, single-minded training that others feel pressure to undertake.“I feel like I’m a mellow guy, but I love a bunch of different things,” Hall said. “A lot of the skiing I do outside of competition, whether it’s street skiing-skiing a city and hitting hand rails-or powder skiing, bouncing off pillows and natural terrain and cliffs, that all helps so much with creativity.”So it was that Hall shook off a week of pre-competition jitters about how his plan would look in the judges’ eyes and stayed true to himself.