Danny Davis Does It In Mammoth

Watching snowboarding for the past few years has made it easy to get complacent about Shaun White winning halfpipe contests. Like it or not, we all do it. He seems the perfect halfpipe machine and that makes it simple to put him in his well-marketed box and mark it “the best halfpipe snowboarder in the world.” When someone beats Shaun, like Danny Davis did today, it feels like they have done the impossible. But that’s not exactly fair to either rider.

The truth today is Danny Davis threw down two of the best halfpipe runs in the history of snowboarding. In his first run he blasted a double cork off the first hit. Followed it up with a a Cab 900, a crail, another double cork, and got in one more spin. And he stomped it all perfectly. The crowd was blown away. His score of 47.2 topped the 11 riders who had come before him by more than four points.

When Shaun White, who was running last, answered back with a monstrous Lien, to backside 900, to back-to-back double corks followed by a frontside 1080 and a Cab 1080 we were all stunned. It was Shaun’s perfect contest runs and no one knew how the judges were going to handle it. They came in with a 46.2.

Wait a minute, we thought. That was one of Shaun’s best runs and it wasn’t enough? Louie Vito was right in there with a 45 but the event suddenly had become all about two snowboarders.

As the early riders completed their second runs of the finals the only real excitement came when Scotty Lago stomped his run of a method to double-cork to cab 9, to frontside 9 to backside 9. That put him into a tie with Louie Vito.

Everyone was wondering what Danny Davis would do in his second run. He was leading going into the second run and it seemed like his first run was about as good as halfpipe gets. “I knew Shaun had tricks that could beat that run,” Danny said at the finish. “And that just motivates me to do my better run.”

And he did just that. Davis dropped in to the sounds of AC/DC’s TNT and hit that first cab double cork 1080 even higher than on his first with a frontside 900 way out followed by a crail and then finished with back-to-back double corks (a double cork frontside 1080 and double backside rodeo). That’s three doubles, one run.

All we could do was wait for Shaun White to see if he could put down what would have to be a perfect run. He started with his normal huge, drifting Lien air to backside 7 then into his back-to-back doubles. When he set up on his next wall with a frontside 540 stalefish we knew he was going to throw something we hadn’t seen in his previous run. He blasted into a double cork that was basically a double McTwist and was coming in a little over the lip and nearly landed on head first. He was able to get his arms out and bring the board around but it was obvious to the crowd that though he attempted a run that would could have beaten Danny Davis it wasn’t going to happen today. He ended up with a 46.2 and second place.

Louie Vito and Scotty Lago were tied at 45 and it went back to the judges and Lago finished out in third.

You know where this all leads: to a run made entirely of double corks and one straight air. We’ll have to wait and see what happens on Friday when this whole Mammoth US Grand Prix Halfpipe showdown starts all over again.

Click here for Men’s Official Final Results.