WINTER X EUROPE Burke wins Women’s SuperPipe

March 21st, 2011

Winter X Europe| Source – ESPN

At the top of her third and final run in Friday’s Women’s Ski Superpipe at Winter X Europe, Canadian Sarah Burke called her dad. “I was a little nervous,” said Burke, who was in sixth place after her second run. “So I called him and he said, ‘You can do it.'”

Sure enough, she did. On her last run, she stuck a cork 900 and an alley-oop flatspin 540, the latter of which was landed for the first time in a women’s ski pipe contest. The run earned her a score of 95.33, the highest women’s skiing SuperPipe score at an X event, and the gold medal – her fifth gold at an X SuperPipe event, including her win at WX15 in Aspen. After hearing her winning score, she called her dad to tell him the good news.

This certainly isn’t the first time in Burke’s decorated freeskiing career that she’s put down a run with new and progressive tricks. “That alley-oop flatspin 5 is a standard trick for the men,” judge Evan Raps said. “But we’ve never seen it in a women’s run before. Sarah had a sick run – and you know she has more than that, too.”

But Burke won’t take the credit for pushing women’s freeskiing forward. “I’m just doing it for myself,” she said. “It makes me happy.”

France’s Anais Caradeux battled through binding issues to land a second-place score of 93.00 with a run that included a 900, a 720 and spins in both directions. American Devin Logan, who broke her hand in the Women’s Slopestyle finals on Wednesday and skied the pipe finals with her hand duct taped to her pole, earned third for a run that had a right flair, a leftside 540 tail grab and a 720. “My hand hurts,” Logan said. “But when I dropped into the pipe, the adrenaline just took over.”

The Women’s Superpipe field was plagued by injuries before the contest began. Winter X Europe defending pipe champ Jen Hudak pulled out of the competition due to a dislocated shoulder and knee injury sustained during training Tuesday night, and WX15 silver medalist Brita Sigourney broke her collarbone in four places during training on Wednesday night.