After getting the whole shred world in a tizzie with a vague facebook post that left many thinking he had retired from competitive snowboarding, Shaun White has fired back with the announcement that he has landed a triple cork in the pipe which he has dubbed the "YOLT Flip"
via onboard:
The sudden U-turn just three days later has surprised everyone – and must be the quickest comeback since Floyd Mayweather’s last false retirement.
What’s more, he’s done it in style, unveiling a trick which he had presumably been planning to launch in the Olympic finals but which – according to sources in the States – he’d been unable to try thanks to a controversially soft pipe in Sochi.
The latest insane move is a frontside triple 1440, captured here during training at a private pipe prior to the Games. And the name? The YOLT Flip – or “You Only Live Twice” – a direct poke at iPod, the man who dethroned him in Sochi with his signature YOLO flip.
Unfortunately there is no video footage of the trick as of yet, but for now we have this sequence shot. Stay tuned for the inevitable GoPro edit.
“Make no mistake, Shaun’s hungrier than ever,” claimed Shaun White Enterprise’s Asian market co-ordinator Fu Lin. “The trick took weeks to perfect – we built the pipe on a volcano in Kamchatka, which was close to the conditions we expected to meet in Sochi but far from prying eyes. The walls were actually bigger than a standard superpipe and we had to trigger an avalanche to get enough snow.”
The You-Only-Live-Twice Flip. Photo: Adam Moran
