There’s been a lot of debate on the interwebz about Shaun White’s recent X-Games win. The judges gave him a perfect 100, but did he deserve it? Well, that depends on who you ask. Here’s my thoughts:
Why Shaun White Didn’t Deserve A 100
There’s no denying it was an amazing run. Easily a high 90s run and definitely the best run we’ve seen in competition halfpipe, as far as difficulty goes anyway. However, the style on the last trick sucked. His hands were all over the place, far from what I’d call a perfect run when you factor style into it.
It was very progressive and all props to him for knocking it out of the park on that last run, but what about all the runs in the past that were progressive, but were marked down for style. Remember back about 5 years ago when some of the european riders were spinning ugly 1260s and 1440s in competition and they got marked down for it?
I even remember Shaun White being interviewed and making comments describing why those riders were marked down despite spinning 12s and 14s. So, why wasn’t Shaun White marked down 1-2 points for style on that last trick.
Give him his 98 or 99 score, but a perfect run should include solid style. It doesn’t have to be perfect style, but at least no hands flying all over the place to force the rotation around if you’re going to award it a 100.
Here’s why all of the above doesn’t matter
At the end of the day it generates a lot of buzz (how many blogs have talked about the perfect ’100′ story already?) and creates the kind of story that the media eats up.
Let’s face it, it’s all hype anyway. Shaun White had the gold in the bag already. He was already 1 point ahead of I-Pod in second place. Whether he got a 98, 99 or 100 doesn’t really matter in the grand scheme of things. It was a victory lap and the judges decided to give him a 100 that wasn’t going to affect the results.
Anyhow, those are just my thoughts, what do you think?
- Jed
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