Sports

Cory Davis rides snowmachine to X Games silver, bronze

Cory Davis will return to Alaska for next month's Iron Dog with two X Games medals from this week's competition in Aspen, Colorado.

Davis, a 26-year-old snowmachiner from Soldotna, captured the silver medal in the long jump competition Friday night, one night after claiming the bronze medal in the speed-and-style competition.

This is the first time Davis has pocketed more than one medal at a single X Games. He has earned six over the last seven years, half of them silver, half of them bronze.

Friday's long jump competition was part of a big night that also included a sold-out Snoop Dogg concert and the big air snowboard competition.

Davis grabbed second place with his sixth-round jump of 160 feet, 5 inches. The gold medal went to Heath Frisby of Idaho, who flew 164-11 on his snowmachine. Colten Moore's jump of 157-4 earned the bronze.

On Thursday night, Davis earned a bronze medal by beating Levi LaVallee in the duel for third place in the speed-and-style snowmachine competition, held in front of a crowd of 16,300 at Buttermilk Mountain. Davis scored 79.9 points to beat LaVallee, who bailed off his machine after a flip.

Moore took the gold, topping Joe Parsons in the two-man battle for first place.

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Friday's performance marked the second straight year Davis has collected the silver medal in the long jump, an event that is exactly what it sounds like: a snowmachiner zooms up a ramp and jumps over a man-made hill to a landing area. Whoever jumps the farthest wins.

Four of Davis' X Games medals have come in the speed-and-style event, which returned to the schedule this year after a one-year hiatus. Davis took silver in the 2013 speed-and-style event and bronze in 2011 and 2009 as well as this year.

In the speed-and-style event, two snowmachiners go head-to-head in a bracket-style elimination competition. They compete on a course that includes big jumps, and they are measured by their speed on the course and the style they show on their jumps.

Thursday's events in Aspen included a Special Olympics dual slalom, in which Alaska's Shannon Sullivan finished eighth.

Davis will team up with two-time X Games medalist Ryan Simon of Canada for next month's Iron Dog, the 2,000-mile snowmachine race across Alaska.

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