X Games Aspen 2026 kicks off in style | Women’s Knuckle Huck

The women brought a huge variety of tricks and approaches, fully embracing the spirit of Knuckle Huck. The comradery at the top of the drop in was audible, with each of the girls cheering on the next, discussing what tricks they were going to try and boosting each other up.

The vibes were high as Anni Kärävä proved once again that she is one of the most well rounded park riders around, putting on a clinic on the knuckle. A super steezy right 720 safety was backed up with a bounce to front flip. It would be enough to finish her in third place.

Special mentions need to be made for sure. Maria Esteban Una, the Madrid metal sliding master, hung a massive rodeo 540 out to dry which almost had Simon Bartik out of his chair—high praise from a man who had just driven 12 hours across Europe. Ahou.

Our thoughts go out to Grace Elden, who after dragging just about everything over the knuckle on a misty 540 thing, took one of the hardest slams to ever be live streamed. She massively over rotated a backy, landing flat on her back way past the transition of the landing. After an extremely long delay, she threw the horns up while being stretchered off. We hope it’s not as bad as it looked.

Grace’s crash, with only a couple minutes left on the clock, put the contest to a close. Before then though, it had been pretty obvious who was battling for the top spots. Two X Games rookies in Alaïs Develay and Marin Hamill were by far the standouts of the session.

Alaïs, with a permanent smile welded to her face, put down a left 720, a super sick right foot knuckle slide to front 450 and capped it off with her best Simon Dumont impression, punching out a superman front flip. Her performance will have had bars erupting from the Pyrenees to Innsbruck such is her charismatic reach. With the same “I can’t believe I am even here” attitude that flowed out of her in our recent interview, she danced her way onto the second step of the podium, coming away with X Games silver.

It was Marin Hamill who deservedly walked away with full honours. She kicked off the session with comfortably the most technical trick, a switch right 360 to knuckle bounce continuing 360. She backed it up with a switch right tail butter 360, a nose butter 540 and zero spin that would make Jossi Wells proud. After the contest was called off, Marin took a confused victory lap by just skiing straight through the course, an understandable option given the long wait. She was then presented with an X Games gold as big as her face.

“I came here with four tricks in mind, and I’m just stoked to land them. It was really fun, Knuckle Huck is the best contest.” Marin beamed.