Sarah Burke clinches Women’s Ski SuperPipe title at 2011 Winter X Games
Sarah Burke triumphed in the Women’s Ski SuperPipe final on Friday, March 18, at Tignes, France, to clinch her fifth WX gold at an SuperPipe event.
France's Anais Caradeux battled through binding issues to finish in second place and take home the silver medal. American Devin Logan, who was competing with an injured hand, managed to secure the last remaining spot on the podium after finishing third.
A clear sky and excellent weather met 2011 Winter X Games Europe (WXE) on its final day. The conditions were ideal for the final of Women’s Ski Superpipe. Eight extremely talented female skiers dropped into the superpipe to lay down their stylish and innovative
runs in order to impress the judges and end up with the highest score of the day.
Burke was the favourite to win this years’ WXE SuperPipe. However, things did not start off too comfortably for her. Her first run at the final was nothing to write home about. The real stress came when she missed out on her second run as well.
Sitting at sixth place after her first two runs, she really started to feel the pressure. In order to look for encouragement and confidence, she called up her dad. The phone call must have filled her up with a new sense of energy because the run that Burke
landed after talking to her dad can only be described as epic.
The run which consisted of a Cork 900 and the first ever alley-oop flatspin 540 in a Women’s Ski SuperPipe earned her a mammoth score of 95.33, the highest score in women's skiing SuperPipe at an X event, to pretty much sealed the fate of the contest.
Discussing Burke’s run later, one of the judges, Evan Raps, said, “That alley-oop flatspin 5 is a standard trick for the men. But we've never seen it in a women's run before. Sarah had a sick run -- and you know she has more than that, too.”
France’s 20-year-old Caradeux earned 93.00 in her first run, which included a 900, a 720 and spins in both directions. The score nearly got her the highest position on the podium, but she was stripped of that honour due to Burke’s final run.
America’s 17-year-old Logan may have been competing with a broken hand, but her spirit was very much intact. She had no intention of letting the hand, that she had broken during the Women’s Slopestyle finals just 2 days ago, become a handicap.
Getting that hand duct taped to her pole, she dropped into the superpipe to take care of business. The perseverance got rewarded as her second run, which included a right flair, a leftside 540 tail grab and a 720, earned her a score of 91.33 and put her
in third place.
“My hand hurts,” Logan said. “But when I dropped into the pipe, the adrenaline just took over.”
The final’s line up was missing the defending WXE SuperPipe gold medallist, Jen Hudak, who had to pull out of the competition due to a dislocated shoulder and knee injury sustained just a day before the commencement of 2011 WXE.
Another rider to be plagued by an injury and missing out on the final was the WX15 silver medallist Brita Sigourney.
She had to sit out this years’ competition after getting her collarbone broken in four places during training on Wednesday night. The participation of these two skiers would have surely raised the level of thrill and excitement in the Women’s SuperPipe final
to an entirely new level.
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