Snowboard halfpipe:
Longtime star Shaun White, 31, still gunning for gold as he practices new tricks for PyeongChang.
The pending showdown in the PyeongChang Olympic halfpipe is destined for legendary status.
The battles next week will be ones for the ages. The men’s and women’s progressive crusades of trickery will ameliorate snowboarding with contests that will be talked about for years as a pivotal moment in the history of pipe riding. Many women will link the biggest tricks ever seen in their sport, setting a new bar for women in the pipe. The men will spin even more.
The Japanese, led by Ayumu Hirano, have honed the most technical runs in the pipe. Australia’s Scotty James has added new tricks this season — including what many consider the hardest trick in the pipe — to boost his Olympic game.
And Shaun White, in his fourth Olympics, is prepping a new run that could deliver his third Olympic gold and undeniably affirm himself as the greatest pipe rider of all time.
White says he has a new plan that could top his last competitive run: a highlight of an already stellar career that saw him earn a perfect score in the Snowmass halfpipe last month to lock up his spot on the Olympic team. So expect him to link a pair of double-cork 1440s, which Hirano did last month for the first time ever to win X Games gold in Aspen.
“I don’t think we’ve seen my best run. Actually, I know,” said snowboarding’s elder statesman at age 31, who last fall questioned this Olympic quest after a brutal slam in a New Zealand halfpipe resulted in more than 60 stitches to his face. “It’s not just about one big trick, it’s about the whole run. I definitely have a couple things in mind that I’ve been working on that I’d like to iron out, and here’s the time to do it and put in my run.
“I set my goals to be here and work on my runs and push through that fear. I’m really excited to say that I have not put down my best run yet.”
White is hardly a lock for gold. Hirano stunned the pipe-riding realm two weeks ago in Aspen when he stepped up a high-scoring run with an extra rotation on his second hit, combining the first-ever pair of double-corked 1440s in the pipe to earn a 99. That was enough to best the 98 points of James, who lost to White two weeks earlier at Snowmass even though he unveiled a groundbreaking switch double-cork 1260, a terrifying trick that requires a blind takeoff and blind landing. Barely two months ago, James’ switch double-12 would have earned him gold. But in a sport that is surging in this Olympic season, not even a first-ever trick is enough.
And it won’t be enough to win in South Korea. Especially when White is conjuring a run that could set a new standard. With renewed focus and yet another turbocharged gear he hasn’t shown the world, he is gunning for gold.
“The feeling I get of accomplishing a trick and then using that trick to win an event and I can stand there with an award in my hand, it’s an undeniably amazing feeling,” White said.
But in a sport where style can sometimes trump technicality, there are athletes whose unassailable virtuosity becomes art in the pipe. Like White’s teammates, Ben Ferguson of Oregon and Eagle’s Jake Pates.
“Those guys are definitely at a different level and they are more technical,” Pates said of the everspinning technicians pushing pipe riding. “I like to focus on style.”
So watch for the style-rich Pates to compete not with just doublecork spinning, but with tricks like his double Michalchuk, an artful, floating move that dates back decades and marries sideways flips into the pipe’s transition with a backside air.
“That’s one of the tricks that really showcases your style because everyone who does it has a different way of doing it,” said the 19-year-old Pates.
Ferguson isn’t playing the spin-towin game.
“I’m just here snowboarding and doing the run I want to do and do the tricks I want to do and do them the way that I think is cool,” said the first-time Olympian. “Sometimes it’s about getting more style in there. There are things you can do besides just going for that next big trick.”
The American women are pushing so hard, there’s a viable chance for the first-ever U.S. female sweep of the Olympic halfpipe. Chloe Kim’s pioneering back-to-back 1080s have pushed and pulled a growing number of women into the spinfest. A year ago, the 1080 was a trick landed only by Kim and fivetime Olympian Kelly Clark. Now, there are at least four more women on that list, including their teammates Arielle Gold and Maddie Mastro. Kim, Arielle and Mastro all stomped 1080s at the Aspen X Games to go 1-2-3, boding well for the trio as they prepare for the showdown in South Korea. The trick had evaded Gold for years.
“I kept trying to learn it, and it was just never quite there,” said Gold, who credits Clark’s and Kim’s 1080s for pushing her to learn the daunting trick. “That was just so much more motivation for me. That’s what you need to do to be able to do well in contests these days and get on the podium.”