News
With 17 Winter X Games medals and two Olympic gold medals (not to mention five summer X Games medals in Skateboard Vert) there isn't much left for snowboarding superstar Shaun White to accomplish — especially now that he can claim to have completed the first-ever perfect run through the halfpipe at the X Games in Aspen last weekend.
But the blogosphere was all a twitter with conspiracy theories after the historic score, as the Shaun White “haters” pointed out that there was very clearly a hand drag upon landing his final hit, which went oddly unnoticed by the event's commentators; while others said he missed a grab somewhere in the middle of the run.
White had already sealed up the win with a first-run score of 94.00, so it was mere history on the line as he dropped in for the victory lap. To the run's credit, White unveiled a never-before-stomped frontside double cork 1260. But doing something that has never been done before has not been grounds for a perfect score in the past — considering we see something new just about every year at the X Games.
To provide a little perspective, the previous all-time high score in the halfpipe, which was also held by White, was judged at a distant 97.66, and the world's second best snowboarder Iouri Podladtchiko (iPod) mustered a remote 93.00 at this year's competition.
Not to take anything away from the Flying Tomato, who is clearly the best snowboarder to ever ride the planet, but perfect means perfect. And the integrity of the X Games has now been overtly brought into question by the publicity stunt.
Clearly, White and the X Games wanted to grab headlines and needed to justify cutting into everybody's Sunday evening SportsCenter. And yawning through a Shaun White five-peat in Aspen just wasn't going to cut it for the folks over at ESPN.
Oh, did I forget to mention the X Games is owned and operated (which includes appointing judges) by ESPN aka The Walt Disney Company?
The X Games — “where dreams come true” — have always been, and always will be, driven by profits and TV ratings, not the betterment of the sport. While there's nothing wrong with big companies making a buck from time to time, do we really want Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck serving as the caretakers and governing body for snowboarding and freeskiing?
It's by no means an entirely new phenomenon —the overlap of governing a sport and trying to generate excitement within it. There's a reason why pass interference penalties in the NFL favor the receiver, and the MLB certainly wasn't complaining when Mark McGuire and Sammy Sosa were playing homerun derby with the game's most cherished record.
But never before has the relationship between the media covering the event and a sport's officiating been quite as cozy as what was on display at the X Games Sunday night.
Of course, FIS and its subsidiary USSA have stepped in (roughly a decade late) and tried to assert themselves as the custodians of park and pipe skiing and snowboarding, but it's been an uphill battle with their main event, the Olympics, falling only every fourth year. And quite frankly, the U.S. Grand Prix (USSA's premier annual circuit) doesn't quite have the street cred of the X Games and Dew Tour.
Perfect scores are not unprecedented at the X Games. Breckenridge's own Bobby Brown snagged a perfect performance in the Big Air in 2010. But should a perfect score ever be awarded? With a constantly evolving sport, isn't that why we continue to move the goalposts with regard to judging these events? Don't we want to imagine that it can always get better?
Certainly, White's run could have been better — if he hadn't dropped his hand on the final landing.
Geoff Mintz is the sports editor at the Summit Daily News. He can be reached at gmintz@summitdaily.com.
But the blogosphere was all a twitter with conspiracy theories after the historic score, as the Shaun White “haters” pointed out that there was very clearly a hand drag upon landing his final hit, which went oddly unnoticed by the event's commentators; while others said he missed a grab somewhere in the middle of the run.
White had already sealed up the win with a first-run score of 94.00, so it was mere history on the line as he dropped in for the victory lap. To the run's credit, White unveiled a never-before-stomped frontside double cork 1260. But doing something that has never been done before has not been grounds for a perfect score in the past — considering we see something new just about every year at the X Games.
To provide a little perspective, the previous all-time high score in the halfpipe, which was also held by White, was judged at a distant 97.66, and the world's second best snowboarder Iouri Podladtchiko (iPod) mustered a remote 93.00 at this year's competition.
Not to take anything away from the Flying Tomato, who is clearly the best snowboarder to ever ride the planet, but perfect means perfect. And the integrity of the X Games has now been overtly brought into question by the publicity stunt.
Clearly, White and the X Games wanted to grab headlines and needed to justify cutting into everybody's Sunday evening SportsCenter. And yawning through a Shaun White five-peat in Aspen just wasn't going to cut it for the folks over at ESPN.
Oh, did I forget to mention the X Games is owned and operated (which includes appointing judges) by ESPN aka The Walt Disney Company?
The X Games — “where dreams come true” — have always been, and always will be, driven by profits and TV ratings, not the betterment of the sport. While there's nothing wrong with big companies making a buck from time to time, do we really want Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck serving as the caretakers and governing body for snowboarding and freeskiing?
It's by no means an entirely new phenomenon —the overlap of governing a sport and trying to generate excitement within it. There's a reason why pass interference penalties in the NFL favor the receiver, and the MLB certainly wasn't complaining when Mark McGuire and Sammy Sosa were playing homerun derby with the game's most cherished record.
But never before has the relationship between the media covering the event and a sport's officiating been quite as cozy as what was on display at the X Games Sunday night.
Of course, FIS and its subsidiary USSA have stepped in (roughly a decade late) and tried to assert themselves as the custodians of park and pipe skiing and snowboarding, but it's been an uphill battle with their main event, the Olympics, falling only every fourth year. And quite frankly, the U.S. Grand Prix (USSA's premier annual circuit) doesn't quite have the street cred of the X Games and Dew Tour.
Perfect scores are not unprecedented at the X Games. Breckenridge's own Bobby Brown snagged a perfect performance in the Big Air in 2010. But should a perfect score ever be awarded? With a constantly evolving sport, isn't that why we continue to move the goalposts with regard to judging these events? Don't we want to imagine that it can always get better?
Certainly, White's run could have been better — if he hadn't dropped his hand on the final landing.
Geoff Mintz is the sports editor at the Summit Daily News. He can be reached at gmintz@summitdaily.com.
