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Inside Shaun White’s Insane Double McTwist 1260

Feb 18, 2010, 3:00 PM UTC

There are many Winter Olympic athletes we admire and many whose athletic ability inspires awe. What Lindsey Vonn did in the Women’s Downhill – beating the field by more than half a second on one good leg – is nothing short of amazing. Shani Davis winning his second Olympic Gold in the men’s 1,000-meter speed skating event is another signature moment of these Olympics that Americans can cherish. â†µâ†µBut we, as laypeople, can fathom what they do. We can comprehend strapping on a pair of skis and flying down a hill. Yes, most of us would crash before we got to the first gate, but skiing down a hill is something many of us have done before, and all of us can envision in our minds. We can imagine skating around a track as fast as humanly possible. It’s impossible for any of us to skate as fast as Davis, but it’s not impossible to comprehend.â†µ

â†µâ†µShaun White’s Double McTwist is incomprehensible. It’s a combination of three twists and two flips, all in the same trick, on a snowboard. I’m no physicist, but it just doesn’t seem like that much twisting and turning would be possible outside of some zero-gravity situation. It seems unfathomable to even try, let alone pull off at the Olympics. Now, it helped that White had already won the Gold Medal after his first run, not needing the “Double Mc”, as he called it, to secure victory in the event. And yes, I understand that in the last few years, the tricks in snowboarding have gotten so far beyond what they were doing in the past that, to most in the industry, White’s culminating trick is just the next step in a series of top-me-if-you-can moves that make these events so fun to watch. â†µ

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â†µFollowing the run, White talked with NBC's Tina Dixon (above) about just how quickly the sport is evolving:â†µ

â†µâ†µâ‡¥“The road has been wild. If you can imagine last season we weren’t even doing Double Corks in a half pipe and now I did three in a run, one being a 1260. So, the progression is just leaps and bounds. It’s such a fly-by-night sport that things can change overnight. Literally we learn these tricks – I learned this trick one day then learned the next trick the next day – I’m just glad to be able to stick with it for so long in such a changing sport.”â†µâ†µIf you can’t believe the trick is actually as nuts as they say, here it is – twist by twist, with some more quotes from White:

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â†µ“I didn’t come back here to hold back anything...
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â†µ“To me, it would be a bit of a disappointment if I didn’t stomp that trick...
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â†µ“I remember looking at my coach and he…he wasn’t saying I’m lazy, but he’s saying that I really don’t stomp things when I don’t need to...
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â†µ“And I really didn’t need to...
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â†µ“And he said don’t do it unless I’m going to stick it...
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â†µ”...so, I don’t know, I put it down...
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â†µ“It was amazing. I can’t even describe it.”
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â†µTodd Richards, who had the call with Pat Parnell for NBC, was nearly at a loss for words as well:â†µâ†µâ‡¥“The Double McTwist. The Big Mac. Whatever you want to call it. The Whitesnake. The Double Double. Extra Tomato. I don’t care what you’re going to call it, that was unbelievable.”â†µâ†µSince the YouTube files keep getting flagged, here’s a link to the video at NBC.â†µ

This post originally appeared on the Sporting Blog. For more, see The Sporting Blog Archives.

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