Women’s Snowboarding January 31, 2010

Well, I’m watching the replay of the Women’s Finals and so far, it’s been CRAZY! After watching most of the girls mess up their scores by falling during the 1st round, Gretchen Bleiler came out with an incredible 1st run, throwing a 900 right off the bat and boosting the halfpipe over 13 feet. She scored a 90.00, which put her in the lead by roughly 50 points.
Kelly Clark’s run came immediately after, and was even more impressive. She threw some really clean tricks and was airing higher than anyone: 15 above the top of the quarter. That is HUGE! Kelly’s run earned a 94.66, but she wasn’t in the lead for long. In the 2nd heat, Gretchen pulled off a super clean and unique run, fitting in a 900 and a 720, and she wound up in the lead by 2 points. Kelly’s second run didn’t go as well…. She tried a 900 and ended up falling.

Gretchen Bleiler’s signature trick, the Crippler

Kelly Clark
Note: These pictures of Kelly and Gretchen are not from Winter X this year
This time around, Gretchen Bleiler won the Gold in her hometown. But, we’ll still see these ladies in the Olympics and I can’t wait to see what they come up with 🙂

X Games 14, cont. January 30, 2010

Well, unfortunately I was unable to catch most of the X Games last night because a much more important athlete was undergoing surgery yesterday (more about stuff like that later…) and needed help recovering. BUT, thankfully because of the invention of the Internet, I can still fill you in on what happened 🙂


Not surprisingly, Shaun White in Men’s Superpipe took the gold medal… again. They score the runs out of 100, each rider gets 3 runs and your best score is what counts:

Final
RANK	NAME	RUN 1	RUN 2	RUN 3	SCORE
1	Shaun White	95.33	31.66	58.00	95.33
2	Iouri Podladtchikov	50.00	93.00	93.66	93.66
3	Kazuhiro Kokubo	78.33	91.00	38.00	91.00
4	Greg Bretz	10.33	87.66	89.66	89.66
5	JJ Thomas	42.00	82.33	34.33	82.33
6	Steve Fisher	70.00	74.66	42.00	74.66
7	Luke Mitrani	57.00	56.00	36.66	57.00
8	Louie Vito	40.00	46.66	35.66	46.66

I was a little bummed that Louie Vito did so poorly… I ❤ that guy!


Tonight there’s the Women Superpipe Finals which is always good… A lot of the competitors are on the US Olympic Snowboarding Team for this year’s games, including Kelly Clark, Gretchen Bleiler (my fav!), Lindsay Jacobellis and Hannah Teter.


There’s also Snowboard Big Air, which is also a great event to check out. If you don’t have access to a television, you can go to ESPN360.com and watch it live. It’s even free if you get cable from an ESPN affiliated company 🙂


I’m going to try to catch some replays to report further on the Men’s Superpipe Finals, and write more tomorrow about what happened with the gals.