Winter Olympics 2022: Sweden’s Walter Wallberg upsets ‘The King’ to win the championship title
Walter Wallberg from Sweden upset “The King” to take home the gold medal in the men’s moguls at the Olympics in Beijing.
Wallberg looked almost in shock when his score of 83.23 flashed on the board, and ended up on the edge of the defending Olympic champion Mikael Kingsbury from Canada on a bitterly cold Saturday night. Wallberg received points for his speed over the agile and technical skiing style in Kingsbury, whose nickname is “King of Moguls”.
Now there is a new king of the litter.
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Ikuma Horishima from Japan took home the bronze. When the athletes posed for the pictures after the competition, Kingsbury looked almost confused as to where he would stand and had to change places with Horishima. Obviously Kingsbury is not used to finishing second.
Wallberg’s surprising victory interrupts the men’s dominance of Team Canada, who had won the competition during the last three Winter Games.
This was Wallberg’s first big win. The 21-year-old Swede has never even won a World Cup event.
Imagine that Wallberg discovered moguls almost by accident. When he moved to Are, Sweden, he saw some children training on the mogul track one day and was drawn directly to the sport.
Kingsbury went into the night as the overwhelming favorite – it always is nowadays. Just look at the red patterns below the knees against his white snow pants to understand why: The patterns rarely move.
But Wallberg appeared faster along the track. The last skier to ride on the Secret Garden Olympic track, he pumped his fist of excitement after his run and raised his glasses to check the scoreboard.
The new king liked what he saw.