Though he had the competition locked without question, American snowboard legend Shaun White capped his gold-medal run on the halfpipe with his signature trick Wednesday night: the deadly Double McTwist 1260.
The "Flying Tomato," as he's been increasingly referred to, quite literally soared above all competition in the men's halfpipe event at Cypress Mountain, British Columbia Wednesday, delivering the U.S. its fifth gold medal in 2010. White scored a 48.4 on the final run, even though he was already assured of defending his 2006 Turin Olympic title with a score of 46.8 on his first trip. Including the women, the U.S. halfpipe team has won 12 of the 21 medals awarded since the sport came to the games in 1998.
Shaun became the first person to win back-to-back gold medals in the halfpipe, and there was no technical need for him to perform his signature move called the Double McTwist 1260 - which involves two off-axis backflips while doing 3.5 full rotations, all in one jump - but he knew the Olympic spectators wanted a show, and he gave 'em one.
"I just felt like I didn't come all the way to Vancouver not to pull out the big guns. I put down the tricks I've worked so hard on," he said after the stunt.
Watch Shaun White's amazing gold medal win in the halfpipe below - make sure to stay with it until the final three seconds, when he pulls the most incredible trick ever, the spinning Double McTwist 1260:
The trick is so advanced that no other competitor in the event even attempted it, and just landing that trick alone would've been enough to ensure Mr. White victory. But he dominated the competition so massively, so thoroughly, that it was almost a pity to watch the other riders. No athlete has pushed the boundaries of a sport harder in recent years than White, whose flamboyant style and aerial acrobatics have supplemented his success on the board with American icon status.
“Shaun had a lot of ideas about things he wanted to do, and really pushed the sport into the future,” said Bud Keene, White’s coach and an assistant for the United States Olympic halfpipe team. “He certainly has done that.”
White gave "60 Minutes" an inside look at his very own top-secret training facility, hidden high in Colorado's rugged back country and built by sponsor Red Bull. He has his very own jaw-dropping 500-foot super pipe, carved into the mountains at an altitude of about 12,000 feet. Accessible only by helicopter, the pipe is so secluded that White doesn't have to share the facility with anyone else, giving him an arguable equivalent of training steroids. He even has a massive foam pit for trying out dangerous new tricks before giving them the bone-break challenge.
Asked why he doesn't train in a more accessible place, like Vail or Aspen, White told the host, "Ya know, it's just a really competitive sport and to keep your tricks private and to keep them a surprise and show up and do something new that's kinda, gonna blow some people away would be really nice."
Watch the "60 Minutes" profile on White and his secret training facility:
The sky is quite literally the limit for White, and we can only wonder with excited anticipation what kind of tricks he'll pull from his sleeve his next time on the pipe.
