The Intelligent Design proved to be a pretty good idea.. Replacing the popular World Superpipe Championships, Park City Mountain Resort’s (PCMR’s) newest snowboarding competition took snowboarding to a whole new level with a never-before-seen mix of big air, half-pipe and jibbing.
That’s right, everything all in one run. And the result seemed to more than favorable. Snowboarding superstar Shaun White took the newfangled event to new heights, soaring far past his competition to win the competition with a score of 95.75 in a best-of-three finals competition.
“It was unreal,” said White after the competition. “I’ve never seen anything like it before It was everything I love doing this event. It’s so fun.”
Canadian Charles Reid took second with a score of 90.00 and Californian Luke Mitrani finished third with an 82.25.
The Intelligent Design Competition, which took place at the Pick ‘N Shovel Terrain Park and on the Eagle Superpipe, required riders to pull out all the stops. It began with a 60-foot step-up jump followed by a large “hip” jump. Then it was on to a jib section of the course before hitting PCMR’s 22-foot superpipe As if that wasn’t enough to keep any rider busy for a week, the run closed out with a 22-foot quarter pipe with a jib feature on the deck.
White said he had been practicing for a few weeks in Silverton, Colo. where he was seeking a little good, old-fashioned privacy. Whether he needed the practice or not, White was certainly ready to go on Saturday, crashing the competition in every aspect of the competition. White already won slopestyle in the X-Games this year and remains the unchallenged king of the pipe, so taking on everything all at once seemed natural to him.
“I like to think of myself as doing everything,” he said.
White put together a title-winning second run that included a Frontside 10 off the first kicker, followed by a Backside 7 on the step-up, a Frontside 270 to a Frontboard on the down rail. In the pipe, White went with a Backside 9, Frontside 3 and Cab 10. He wrapped it all up with an Alleyoop Backside Rodeo on the quarterpipe.
Mitrani said that putting together tricks for such an event was a little challenging. He had some trouble earlier in the week, but it all came together for him on Saturday. After struggling on his first two runs, he put together a third one that gave him a piece of the $50,000 prize purse.
“It worked awesome for me,” he said. “It’s amazing you can go from pipe to slopestyle in one run.”
Park City’s Joe Eddy and Sage Kotsenburg represented their hometown well in the finals, finishing in the sixth and seventh place, respectively. The 15-year-old Kotsenburg said that he had a large crew of family and friends cheering him down the pipe. Even with that kind of support, Kotsenburg said this competition took lots of planning to make sure he had plenty of tricks from start to finish.
“You’ve got to think about what you’re going to do because you’ve got to spread it over the whole run,” he said.
Kotsenburg said mixing things up will only add to the sport. He said people are already hitting both the pipe and the park more to improve their skills on both.
“I think it’s great that they put all of this together,” chimed in Reid.
With such an innovative competition, PCMR may have started a whole new trend in the sport and, in turn, brought even more buzz to the mountain.
“I think this is no longer the hidden gem of snowboarding,” White said.
Next up is the U.S. Open in Stratton, Vt., where the top riders will look to wrap up their season with top honors.