Tanner Takes SuperPipe Gold, Again!

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"Tanner's been eerily calm and relaxed today," said Tyson Hall, Tanner's brother, just minutes before the SuperPipe Finals at Winter X Games 12 commenced tonight. Perhaps Tanner is a phenom turned prophet and he knew all he had to do to win his 7th X Games gold medal was to stick one run like he'd been doing in practice. The finish area around the bottom of the SuperPipe was abuzz in the hours leading up to the big show, during practice. "Tanner's got this in the bag," was a phrase that go thrown around more than once along with, "He's scary smooth, like butter."

Tanner found a formidable opponent in Simon Dumont. The Dumont had a fire in his eyes and was going through practice runs at a feverish pace. During his first run, however, he fell and popped off a ski on his third hit: the 1260. Simon didn't quite have enough air to bring it around, surely due to the fact that it began to DUMP just as the finals began. Unfazed by a slowing pipe, Tanner nonchalantly shot into first place with a first run score of 90.

Simon, and the rest of the field regrouped as the snow let up and the temps dropped a bit. Simon's second run was clean and big, but the effort only gave him an 87.66 score. Meanwhile, Tanner dropped in and went bigger than the first run. His winning run consisted of a front side nine, a 1260, an alley oop flat spin 540, 900, flat 360 to fakie, switch 720, and an alley oop 900 to round it out. He pulled further into the lead with a 92.33, a bar that would prove to be too much for Simon to overcome.

The Dumont put forth a valiant effort in the end. He came into the pipe like his hair was on fire and boosted bigger off the first hit than anyone else tonight: easily getting 20 feet out. He stuck a clean run and had the crowd fully behind him, but in the end the score that came down from the booth was a 91.00, not enough to take the lead. Tanner dropped in for buttery victory lap, throwing down some big grabs to please the crowd. A very gracious Simon Dumont greeted Tanner with an embrace and the two shared some good words.

Another chapter in the Tanner vs. Simon SuperPipe saga is in the books, and for now it looks like Tanner sits comfortably ahead of the pack in his reign over Winter X Games SuperPipe. It was a great night for team Red Bull, taking silver and gold in the premier event in professional freeskiing.

Pop over to Red Bull teammate Jon Olsson's Video Blog for video of the finals.