Shawn White take the gold- Amazing
 

Guy kills it in the 1/2 pipe. Anyone watch it?

Watched the his first run in eliminations. It was badass and he was being conservative. Cannot imagine what he did in the finals!

Go USA

Did they even show the finals? I stopped watching because they cut to some other show. :vash:

Yes, he won it on his first final run. Then the second, and last run was a "fun run" which scored even higher than the first run. Guy is terrific on a snowboard!

Even if he reminds me of carrot top and makes me want to set him and his plaid shirt on fire.

Did you guys see how many girls the downhill ate?
That course was not that fast, but the snow set up with some funky ripples.

A bunch of girls ate it hard.

Meg and I were watching that. With their limited coverage, you knew if the girl wasn't American or was already a few tenths behind the leader at the top of the hill, she was gonna bite it HARD at some point. It was amazing how far down the hill they would slide and continue to get launched off stuff.

Shawn White...yeah, pretty cool. I don't see the difference between his runs and the others though, I guess I'm not cool enough, other than he getting higher on the "how high can you go without doing anything" requirement.

Yeah Shaun is badass.

Now if shawn's board had wheels, and the half pipe was concrete/plywood/fiberglass- that would be badass.

I don't think I know any women that have the balls to go for it on a downhill ski run like that. Reminiscent of the human body when falling of a motorcycle.

I question the score of 48.6 on the second run. I know that it didn't matter, but it seemed high. He really had to force the Big Mac at the end and almost lost it. Had he not already had it sown up, I don't think the score would have been that high. It was not within 1.4 of perfect. Was good to see him repeat, though.

70mph isn't that fast? Catching 100-150 foot air isn't that big? I hope your not serious.

He is a pro 1/2 pipe skateboarder too IIRC.

You don't think so? The double mic-twist at the end i think was very close to perfect, considering he wasn't very high out of the pipe on the last hit.

+1 on Shawn White he is definitely the man when it comes to halfpipe snowboarding. Did you see the segment about his private halfpipe practice facility with the huge foam pit? They ran some brief video of him skying out of the pipe and landing experimental tricks in the pit. Awesome. The trick escalation at the competitions is fast, similar to what is happening with freestyle motorcross.

+1 on the women skiing the downhill race, and the men too for that matter. They are going so freaking fast on the edge of control. Plus, if the hill looks steep on video, which it does, it is ridiculously steep when on it in person. You can see it by how far down the mountain the women that crashed kept sliding even when they had slowed down to a fairly steady speed.

I've never snowskiied, just snowboarded, but I'll bet the ride on the downhill is absolutely fantastically intense.

It's hard to say "considering". Perfect either is or isn't. The landing was definitely poor. Hit it, didn't have full rotation, almost butt planted it, just not clean. It's hard to say that run was 1.4 from PERFECT. That's all. Not taking anything away from him, He did a great job and I'm glad to see the repeat, I just thought it was a very generous throwaway score on a throwaway run. That's all.

Oh yeah also how cool is an Olympic sport (snowboarding) when you can do your thing while listening to your favorite tune on an iPod?

Not to derail the thread or ruffle feathers, but I stand firm on my opinion that activities that require judging to determine a winner aren't sports, but activities. My time should tell me that I won, not some judge after the fact.

Downhill, Luge = Auto Racing
Halfpipe, Figure Skating = Drifting

I am NOT saying that the participants aren't very skilled or athletic.

Yeah agreed there is some truth to that. You start here, you finish here, you stay within these lines (gates), and your time is your time. At least in freestyle moguls they are partially scored on their time to complete the course.

If I were somehow magically able to become a winter olympian I would choose downhill over halfpipe. In fact whenever I go snowboarding I skip the terrain park completely and just go for the long, carving, faster downhill runs. I think being able to go fast enough to seriously compete in a downhill would be fantastic.

Speaking of which it seemed several years ago there was some development of a downhill version of snowboarding. Not the board-cross thing or whatever it is called, but more of a go fast sport. The board bindings had both feet rotated much more towards the front and even had suspensions. I wonder what ever happened to that? I wonder if there is any way they could ever go as fast as the ski downhill? If not there would be that stigma to overcome. 'Yeah that was cool, but did you watch the skiing downhill? Now that is fast...'

Speaking of awesome females in timed winter olympic sports, kudos to that female cross-country sprint skiier (Euro, I forget which country) that crashed in practice and was injured, but in obvious pain still went on to qualify, race, and finish with a bronze. They reported today she competed with four broken ribs. Damn... Now that is determination.
EDIT: Conflicting reports now on whether her ribs were actually broken. NBC reported they were, Reuters is reporting that they were not. NBC could clearly prone to bias towards the broken ribs report as it would add to the drama.

I've seen a few races lost in impound, thanks (or no thanks) to some judge. ;)