Thursday, January 28, 2010

Breaking Down Shaun White's Double McTwist 12

The Vancouver Winter Olympics are rapidly approaching now. One event I am personally looking forward to is the Men's Half Pipe Snowboarding event on February 17th.

We all know that in this event, Shaun White is the man to beat. The defending men's half pipe champion recently unveiled a new trick that he will likely perform at the Olympics, the Double McTwist 12.

Sounds really complicated, but what exactly is it? Below is a video of Shaun white performing this crazy trick. We can use the video to break the trick down and understand it better.



We can start with the obvious, the 12 in the trick name refers to the number of twists. Shaun is rotating 3 and half full twists or 1260 degrees. It is pretty hard to pick that up as he needs to twist so quickly to finish the trick.

A McTwist is a 540 degree spin (or one and half rotations) with a flip in the middle. Double the McTwist would be a total of 3 rotations and 2 flips.

Therefore the Double McTwist 1260 can be broken down as a half pipe aerial with 2 flips and 3 and a half twists. If you watch the slow motion replays of the trick you can pick out the two flips and spot the beginning of each twist.

Look out for this trick on February 17th in Vancouver and possibly other new tricks by Shaun's competitors.

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2 comments:

jason heyward said...

Im a little surprised that Shaun is competing in the X Games, with the Olympics just a few weeks away. I think the injury potential far outweighs the reward.

Dudley Tabakin said...

Jason, my wife asked me the same question last night. My thoughts are that he did it in 2006 and won gold then, so he may feel that it is good mental preparation for the Olympics.

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