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Perfect score or perfect publicity stunt? |
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Friday, February 03, 2012 10:30 |
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Gold medalist Shaun White flies high above the SuperPipe on Jan. 29, 2012 at the ESPN Winter X Games, held at Buttermilk Mountain at Aspen/Snowmass. Christian Murdock, The Gazette
By Geoff Mintz, Summit Daily 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.
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.
Read Geoff's entire column and why many are questioning the judges' score of White's SuperPipe run.
And please weigh in with your own opinion!
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