Aspen – Shaun White spins to win.
The 19-year-old snowboarding sultan threw two 1080s to spin his way to his fourth gold medal in snowboarding slopestyle, a record for the fellas in Winter X.
The bandanna-clad bandit, in his seventh X Games, stole the slopestyle show Saturday as thousands watched him twirl his way past 10 competitors.
“I wasn’t thinking about the four (medals), I wasn’t,” said the boy who became king and will ferry his snowboarding show to Italy next month in his first Winter Olympics. “The X Games is my time to have fun. Oh, I definitely feel the weight. There’s a lot of weight. But honestly, I think the pressure makes me ride way better.”
Two hours earlier, Oregon’s Janna Meyen crushed the so-called four-gold curse by taking her fourth consecutive gold in the slopestyle. Her huge switch 720 on the final booter demolished the competition and earned her the shiniest collection of X Games bling in the event’s history.
The shredder from Bend, Ore., stepped into the park for the first time this season only two weeks ago. But those two weeks of practice were enough to continue her reign as slopestyle queen.
“I try to keep my mind super clear,” Meyen said. “I’m always thinking about exactly what is going on right where I am. I’m not thinking about the run as a whole. My mind kind of works like a computer, I guess.”
Meyen won decisively, but it was one of the closer contests in her four-year run as slopestyle champion. Hana Beaman’s buttery-smooth cab 540 earned her a second X Games slopestyle silver and 15-year-old Jamie Anderson took bronze, her first Winter X medal, which an hour later she doubled with a silver in women’s boardercross.
The final stretch in the men’s contest was a nail-biter. It was a best of two runs format, and the final rider, Travis Rice of Jackson, Wyo., was on his way to block White on his last run. Crouched low coming up to the Last Chance booter, Rice threw a breathtaking off-kilter double backflip.
But alas, the two-time inversion forced him to set down a hand on his landing. The slightest bobble in a routine – a hand touching snow, a slight wiggle or wave in the air – was enough to differentiate the medalists from the masses as 10 of the world’s best snow surfers laid down technical, tight runs that came close to flawless.
Andreas Wiig, the only competitor who mirrored White’s 1080s, eked out a final rotation on the last booter of second run to claim silver. It was Norway’s Wiig who forced White to learn a front- side, backside and cab 1080 last season.
California’s Danny Kass, another boarder headed for Italy in his second round under the Olympic spotlight, earned bronze with a staggering switch backside rodeo over the 55-foot gap jump. That means he left the lip of the jump facing backward and flipped upside down over the deadly gap.
“It was pretty scary since I haven’t really done that trick in a year,” Kass said. “Turns out it was one of the best ones I have ever done.”
Jason Blevins can be reached at 303-820-1374 or jblevins@denverpost.com.
