The unstoppable Shaun White has broken another record at last weekend’s Winter X Games in Aspen, Colorado. The 25-year-old flame-haired two-time Olympic gold-medal winning snowboarder scored the first perfect score in Winter X Games history in the men’s snowboard superpipe final, and as a consequence won his fifth gold medal at the event, a first for any athlete in the snowboard superpipe.White scored 100 out of a possible 100 on his final run after having sealed the win with his score of 94.00 for his first run, pushing Iouri Podladtchikov (known as iPod to his friends) into second with his score of 93.00.
White was determined to unveil his latest trick, a frontside double cork 1260. In plainer English, that’s three and a half rotations in the air, but with the added spice of a double cork. A cork is when the rider’s head dips below their waist when spinning round, and when it’s done twice that’s a double. So not only did White rotate three and a half times, he threw in two flips as well. Any clearer? See it for yourself in the video below.
He fell attempting the trick in his second run, giving himself a black eye and a bloodied chin, so was fired up for his third attempt. With nothing to lose White completed a victory lap that included a massive 18-foot backside air, a frontside double cork 1080, a Cab double cork 1080, a frontside stalefish 540, a double McTwist 1260 and the frontside double cork 1260.
“It’s unreal,” said White, after scoring 100. “I’ve been wanting that 100 forever.”
This latest win takes White’s total Winter X Games medal count to 17 (12 of them are gold) and he’s won the snowboard superpipe every year since 2008.
“My night wasn’t complete until I landed that run,” White told The Colorado Springs Gazette. “I put (the frontside double cork 1,260) out there on the second run, and it put my face into that icy wall, and I was so upset from that. … It was one of those things where if I didn’t do it now, I would forever kind of have this weird mindset that this trick was dangerous and scary. I didn’t want it to like manifest in my mind. I had already won … and I knew I had some more to do still.”
