PYEONGCHANG, SOUTH KOREA—With a towering final ride and a score of 97.75, Shaun White reclaimed snowboarding dominance Wednesday, winning his third Olympic gold medal in halfpipe with flying bravado. Twenty years into snowboarding’s run as an Olympic sport, nobody’s established themselves a bigger presence than White, the redhead from San Diego who added to the back-to-back halfpipe golds he won in 2006 and 2010. White took the lead with a 94.25 on his first of three runs — a score that was topped by Japan’s Ayumu Hirano’s 95.25 on the second run, when White crashed. Aiming for a gold-medal three-peat at Sochi four years ago, White crashed on his final run and finished fourth. It’s hard to admit,” White told reporters in South Korea in the lead-up to the competition.

Source: thestar February 14, 2018 03:45 UTC