"Gotta' come back next year and win this piece." --
Shaun White, Winter X Games VI.
And like some sort of superpipe fortune teller, 16-year-old "Future Boy" Shaun White looked into a snowy crystal ball and predicted his fate for the Winter X Games VII Superpipe competition. Seeing him sit atop the start deck waiting to drop in for his final run, the gold medal already wrapped with a first-run score of 97.67, it was clear … the future is now.
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| Gold medal winner, Shaun White, turns up the base for the crowd with this big ol' method air. |
But it wasn't like the whole day was about watching Shaun do his thing. There was camaraderie among the riders by honoring a legend with stickers on boards and bibs reading, "Craig Kelly is my co-pilot." And there was some good old fashioned competition drama on hand. After the first qualifying run, neither
Ross Powers, JJ Thomas or Danny Kass, all Olympic medalists, had secured a spot in the finals. And Steve Fisher was riding with a 2nd degree separated shoulder and still hucking backside 540s that Danny Kass described as "pretty hot... my favorite trick of the day."
The tension mellowed when the dust settled from qualifying. The Olympians made it in, the ten finalists were determined, and everybody seemed to think the line-up was straight. Mostly because the judge's panel was pretty much a who's who of snowboarding, including Andy Hetzel,
Shannon Dunn and Noah Salasnek.
"I think the right guys are in the finals. It's always hard to sit there and judge every single run," said
Todd Richards, the '00 gold medalist who was sidelined with an injury and commentating for ESPN. "I wish I was 16 and that good … I'm gonna have to Tonya Harding his legs." Perhaps Richards was sensing what would happen when Shaun posted the #1 qualifying score of 95.33.
The day, however, was much more than just first-place foreshadowing -- there were plenty of other pipe technicians on hand and they were all unpacking their tools.
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| Markku Koski turns out a big 540 mellon on his first hit of the finals, finishing third. |
Start with the smoothed out flow-like-water-even-though-I'm-going-bigger-than-all-y'all style of
Keir Dillon and his signature "Keir Roll" McTwist blasting double overhead off the backside wall. Or how about the adrenalized young blood of 17-year-old Joe Eddy? He rode with an aggression that screamed "cash or crash!" and won the super-copter award for pulling a 1260 out of the quiver.
But the real eye-catcher of the day was Markku Koski and his technical mastery of the 18-foot polar transition. Every hit stomped at the top of the transition, every flat bottom crossed with speed, and every spin executed like a Swiss timepiece - right on time. He was the first rider to cleanly land the 1080 and was the only rider throwing switch methods, switch alley-oop indys and the elusive switch alley-oop backside rodeo.
"In the beginning, I was kind of struggling with the tricks," said Koski. "I didn't go too big and was kind of taking it easy."
Markku's explosive 1st run put him in the top position with a 96.33. But there was still Shaun White.
White, with a cowboy red bandana wrapped around his face, linked together an amazing line. A massive McTwist to incredibly huge and smooth frontside 900? Stomped. A Haakon Flip 720 to backside alley-oop rodeo? Stomped. Blend these combinations with big leins, backside airs and a set-up 720 and you have the new definition of a gold medal superpipe run.
"I don't know, the sun came out and I got all stoked," said White. "I just wanted to have some fun and it turned out sick." And the 900? "I don't know. I try to do 1080's all the time and when I learned those, it made 9's super easy."
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| Danny Kass pokes out a big stalefish in his second run of the finals, netting him second place. |
At this point it would have been easy to have called it over, giving Shaun first and Markku second. But can you really count on anything when Danny Kass still has one run to go? During his second run Kass unleashed a triple poke 720 into an inverted cab 1080 mellon, which judge Andy Hetzel would later say was the most stylish combination of the day. The rest of the judges agreed scoring Danny a 96.67, pushing him past Markku into second place.
"I wasn't really nervous on the last run because I thought we had three runs," said Danny. "But there was only two, so I was stoked."
Watching him spin that perfectly stuck cab 1080 was like a stunning combination of madness and precision; picture Jello Biafra driving a Ferrari F1.
Markku did have one run left and a chance to reclaim second place. He threw the only switch backside rodeo of the day but it didn't impress the judges and he stayed in third.
"Yeah, I thought he (Markku) was going to finish a little better on his second run. He was riding really well," said Danny.
This left Shaun with one run to go and nothing to gain, he'd already won his first Winter X Games superpipe gold … the future is here indeed.
Related Photos:
Snowboard SuperPipe Men's Gallery
