Shaun whiteThe return to the Winter X Games ended before he could make his first league run in nearly three years.
White squeezed one of his knees during practice the week leading up to the Sunday night snowboard halfpipe event in Aspen, Colorado, according to his social media.
“After speaking to medical staff, I decided that persistence would only make things worse,” White’s Instagram posted about four hours before the game. “It’s a tough decision, but I have to give my knee some time to recover and I’ll be right back.”
White, 34, last competed in snowboarding at the 2018 Olympics in PyeongChang, earning his third gold medal. He returned to riding after an aborted attempt to qualify for the Tokyo Olympics in skateboarding.
“Every time it just feels like another attempt, ”White, who will be older than any man next year to compete in an Olympic snowboard halfpipe, said in an X Games video interview last week. ‘I’m not really letting go of the gas. You may not see me, but I still do all the things I have to do. “
White’s anticipated return to X Games, his first time at the biggest annual snowboard competition since 2017, was heralded as a showdown with the Australian Scotty James. James took bronze in PyeongChang, winning three of the last four X Games titles.
But Japanese 19 year old Yuto Totsuka ruled Aspen, defeating James for the third consecutive time against each other and stamping himself out as the Olympic favorite of early 2022. Totsuka, 11th in PyeongChang as the youngest entrant, took first place on Sunday based on overall impression instead of one of his four runs being scored.
According to commentators, he had a pair of 1440s in one of his runs.
James came in second, followed by another Japanese, Ruka Hirano. Taylor Gold was the best American in fourth place. At least one American man made it to the half-pipe podium in the first 23 editions of the X Games in the US, but none have made it in the past two years.
Earlier on the last race day Sunday, snowboarder Jamie Anderson earned her eighth X Games title, but her first in the big air.
Anderson, the two-time Olympic champion and seven-time X Games slopestyle champion, defeated a large airfield that included every medalist from the last three X Games, plus every 2018 Olympic medalist, led by Austrian Anna Gasser (who was seventh on Sunday).
Anderson, 30, is already the only female snowboarder with multiple Olympic titles. She said after winning Friday’s slopestyle crown that she thought this would be her last competitive season, but now doesn’t know when she will retire.
Anderson is a Winter X Games medalist for the Canadian snowboarder’s record of 20 Mark McMorris and twice gold for the American snowboarder’s female record Lindsey Jacobellis.
American men won snowboard slopestyle (Dusty Henricksen) and ski slopestyle (Nick Goepper).
Henricksen, a 17-year-old X Games rookie, became the first male snowboarder in the US to win an X Games Aspen slopestyle since White in 2009. Previously, his biggest title was the 2020 Winter Youth Olympics.
He defeated a field including Olympic champion Red Gerard (seventh on Sunday). It was missing five-time X Games champion McMorris, who missed X Games for the first time since its debut in 2011 due to a positive coronavirus test.
Goepper, an Olympic silver and bronze medalist, took his fourth X Games ski slopestyle title and the first since a 2013-15 three-peat.
What the future holds for snowboarders and freeskiers is unclear. The bi-annual world championships for China in February were canceled, but can be rescheduled.
The Burton US Open, usually a season end in late February or early March for snowboarders, was also canceled due to the pandemic.
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