ASPEN — With no one left to beat in the superpipe, snowboarder Shaun White found a new opponent at Winter X Games 14: himself.
White established new marks for gold medals and overall medals in X Games competition with the first three-peat performance in snowboard superpipe at Winter X on Friday night. The 10-time gold medalist with 15 total Winter X medals to his name set the high mark of 95.33 on his first of three runs through the Buttermilk superpipe.
Swiss rider Iouri “I-Pod” Podladtchikov finished second at 93.66, followed by Kazuhiro Kokubo of Japan with 91.00.
White’s win came with its own set of obstacles outside of competition, however. While training less than an hour before the contest, the 23-year-old from Carlsbad, Calif., crashed while attempting his new double-McTwist 1260, considered the most difficult trick ever attempted in the halfpipe.
The reigning Olympic champion came up short on a trick he invented earlier this season and landed face-first on the corner of the pipe’s 22-foot wall, shattering his goggles, sending his helmet flying and slumping to the bottom of the pipe.
“I cracked my head pretty good. I was pretty dazed after that one. And it just set kind of a weird tone on that trick for the rest of the night,” the bloodied White said afterward. “It was kind of lingering in the back of my mind. First thing I did was I ran up and did (the trick) again to make sure it didn’t put a weird complex in my mind.”
The strategy apparently paid off, as White used the spectacular trick to cap off a winning first run that included a huge 23-foot method air, frontside 1080 and a cab double-cork 1080, in addition to the double-McTwist 1260. The remaining seven riders in the field, including six Olympic athletes from three nations, tried in vain to match the feat.
After establishing the new genre of double-corked tricks — essentially two off-axis flips combined with two to three spins — White appears to have changed the game in this Olympic season. No longer are competing riders allowed the luxury of a so-called “safety run” to get a solid score before laying down their top tricks in the halfpipe, because White’s second-best, and potentially third-best, run are often good enough to win.
In his last of three laps through the pipe, White unleashed his Olympic dream run that included back-to-back double-cork 1080s leading up to the double-McTwist, which he failed to land.
“Everyone who is doing a double-cork right now has to say thank you to this guy,” Podladtchikov said as he pointed to White. “I had it my mind a few years ago. … But to do it in a run and every time is something we couldn’t imagine before we actually saw (Shaun) do it. That’s why we all look up to him, but at the same time we try to beat him, of course.”
The strong showing among international riders at the last contest prior to Vancouver 2010 served notice to the typically dominant American men’s team. Olympic team rider Greg Bretz of Mammoth Lakes, Calif., turned in the top U.S. performance outside of White, finishing fourth at 89.66.
2002 Olympic bronze medalist JJ Thomas of Golden was fifth at 82.33, followed by Breckenridge teammate Steve Fisher in sixth with 74.66. Louie Vito, the third American competitor named to the 2010 Olympic team competing Friday night, placed eighth with a 46.66.
