The video includes what went down on March 5, 2010 during qualifications at The Arctic Challenge. Here are the results from Saturday’s semi-finals (read the story here):
1 30 Peetu Piiroinen FIN
2 23 Mikkel Bang NOR
3 8 Tore Holvik NOR
4 14 Eric Willett USA
5 9 Seppe Smits BEL
6 22 Torstein Horgmo NOR
7 33 Mark McMorris CAN
8 7 Ville Uotila FIN
9 12 Roope Tonteri FIN
10 15 Sage Kotsenburg US
There is still time to catch the final event live on Sunday, March 7, 2010. Click here beginning at 4 AM PST.
We’re not the biggest fans of where all these halfpipe shenanigans are going. Yes, Shaun White got a big jump on everyone with his double-McTwist, but by summer we’re guessing all the top dogs will have them on lock. See, Iouri Podladtchikov already has them (although a little late for the Olympics). Then Shaun will have to triple up and the whole arms race will start all over again. Is this really where snowboarding should be going?
Snowboarder Erica Patterson, 43, of Hidden Hills, California was found dead in a tree well on Saturday, February 27, 2010 on Mammoth Mountain’s Lincoln Mountain, according to a story in the Orange County Register.
At 1:30 p.m. Mammoth Mountain Ski Patrol were told that Patterson. . . had become separated from her husband while snowboarding through the trees. . . .Ski patrollers searched the area and at 4:25 p.m. found Patterson about 50 yards off the side of a run in a tree well. Patterson was found when a senior ski patroller probed tree wells and first discovered her snowboard buried under the snow.
The Mono County Sherriff’s office is investigating Patterson’s death, according to the story, but officials believe she suffocated under about three feet of snow. Our thoughts are with her family and friends.
The United States Snowboard Association has filed suit against Go211.com owner Action Sports, Inc. after they say the company failed to pay the USSA a “$175,000 sponsorship fee, plus a 30 percent share of the defendant’s advertising rev according to a story in the Salt Lake City Tribune.
Alleging breach of contract, unjust enrichment and trademark infringement, the USSA is asking a U.S. District Court for Utah judge to award the organization monetary damages and to stop Boston-based Action Sports from displaying USSA-affiliated materials. . . . Action Sports President Sean Aruda declined to discuss details of the case, but said, “we obviously have a much different view of the facts … This is just a business disagreement they chose to escalate. . . “We’re disappointed their attorneys took this action, and we’re confident it will be settled amicably,” he added. “We would love to continue doing business with them.”
Not that we’re not getting enough Shaun White all over the rest of the world, now we get to see his bright, shining, flowing locks along with boardercross gold medalist Seth Wescott on boxes of our favorite breakfast cereal.
“It’s great being on a Wheaties box,” said White. “I remember being a kid and looking up to the guys whose faces were on these boxes and thinking how cool it was. I’m just stoked that Wheaties wanted me on the box and I can represent my sport in such a great way.”. . . “Having your very own Wheaties box is something many athletes strive for; so today it is an incredible feeling to see my box and know it represents determination, hard work and focus in a sport that’s relatively new to the winter games,” said Wescott. “To earn two consecutive gold medals means so much, and the culmination of now having a Wheaties box is the icing on the cake.”
The boxes will be available in stores beginning in April 2010.
Early Olympians reportedly competed nude. In that sense, this Terry RichardsonRolling Stone cover of Shaun White rocking out shirtless over his burning board makes some sort of sense.
Shaun White has revolutionized snowboarding, won the big gold in Vancouver and lit his snowboard aflame, Hendrix-style, on the cover of the new issue of Rolling Stone, joining an elite club of athletes to appear on our cover not once, but twice. . . And as the focused, business savvy White tells it, a lot of his recent success on the half-pipe and off can be attributed to a new addition to his life: “Getting into music has changed my personality and my way of doing things,” he reveals to RS writer Vanessa Grigoriadis. “I”m far more open now.”
Jimi Hendrix would be proud. At least the rest of Shaun is covered up. . . click the link for video.
Shaun White and the Olympic pipe jocks aren’t the only shreds taking the double double. Eric Willett doubles up on his way to stomping a win at the TTR River Jump in Livigno, Italy last weekend. Don’t know that we’ve ever seen anyone land an entire run so solid.
The good news is that the Long Valley caldera, like her big sister Yellowstone in Wyoming, is not getting ready to super-erupt and again cover half of North America in ash. The bad news is that when Long Valley does someday get hot and bothered again, it may prove to be surprisingly bi-polar.
In other words it could blast and ooze, according to Stanford University geologist Gail Mahood. Mahood’s new research on the Mammoth supervolcano has not changed any future activity projections, though. That stat remains at “less than a one percent chance that it’s going to blow in any given year.”
