When American Snow Boarder Shaun White dropped out of the new SlopeStyle competition at the Sochi Olympics to concentrate on his upcoming HalfPipe event, he caught a lot of flack. A few fellow competitors even called him a coward and a sellout.
Shaun White is probably the best known name in the sport of Snow Boarding. In fact it could be said that he put the sport on the map. He won the Gold Medal in the HalfPipe at the last Winter Olympics and has won more money off of the sport than any other competitor.
One guy who didn’t complain too much about Shaun’s dropping out of the SlopeStyle was his USA teammate Sage Kotsenburg who wound up winning the first Gold Medal awarded to anyone in the 2014 Sochi Olympic Winter Games for team USA and he did it with trickery!
It’s true, even Sage will admit it. He calls the trick “Holy Crail” and he has been working to perfect it for some time now. On his first run down the course at Sochi Kotsenburg nailed the ‘Holy Crail’. You could see the exhilaration on his face as he finished the run. He knew that he had nailed it and the judges agreed.
When Kotsenburg, who is only 20 years old, flew off the first big jump on the SlopeStyle course and propelled himself into a helicopter twirl that kept on twirling through an incredible four and a half rotations the spectators were amazed, as always.
But then when he grabbed the back of his board and flexed his legs behind his back and came down for a perfect landing, an audible ‘wow’ rose up from the crowd which knew right away that they were witnessing something very special indeed and the judges agreed.
The Coeur d’Alene, Idaho native later claimed that he had no real plan going into the program. “I kind of do random stuff all the time, never make a plan up. I had no idea I was even going to do a ‘1620’ in my run until three minutes before I dropped. It’s kind of what I’m all about.”
The official name for the trick that won the gold for Kotsenburg is a “1620 Japan Air Mute Grab”…. but Sage still calls it his “Holy Crail”…. and with good reason… it scored him a 93.5 that no one else was able to catch and won him an Olympic Gold Medal!
