ASPEN — Snowboarding superstar Shaun White stepped up to the challenge of history Sunday night, taking down the Winter X Games superpipe field to become the first rider ever to defend his title in the marquee event.
White’s repeat performance stood in stark contrast to 2006, when he dominated the event with the top three scores. Instead, on Sunday he needed all three runs to come from behind to post the top score of 91.66 as the final rider to drop in.
The 2006 Olympic champion had two uncharacteristic falls on his early runs, swapping out a more difficult trick off the final hit for a conservative “McTwist” that awarded him a controversial scoring decision over silver medalist Kevin Pearce.
“I was feeling cursed, man. I didn’t think I needed three runs to get it done,” said White, who earned the privilege of the final start spot by qualifying first. “I knew I had the run in me, and I just needed to put it down. I put it down.”
Pearce established the score to beat of 90.66 on his second lap through the pipe, using amplitude of more than 19 feet to land a pair of 1080s but opting out of a final hit of his own in the snow-filled superpipe.
Antti Autti of Finland, the 2005 X Games champion, finished third with a score of 87.33.
White won the snowboard slopestyle event on Saturday with his last run.
White has a record nine Winter X Games gold medals, 15 total.
“I was really excited after (winning) slopestyle to qualify first in the pipe,” White said. “I was just feeling it in practice. The first run, I came out of nowhere and I just messed up.
“With that one run to go, I was like, ‘I gotta put this down.’ ”
