Pete Thomas Outdoors

Snowmobiler Caleb Moore, 25, dies a week after Winter X Games crash

Snowmobile rider Caleb Moore, 25, died Thursday morning, exactly one week after being injured in a crash at the Winter X Games in Aspen, Colo., reports The Denver Post. Moore's death is the first fatality in the 17-year history of the Winter X Games.

Though details on the exact cause of death were not disclosed, family spokeswoman Chelsea Lawson released the following statement on behalf of the Moore family:

"The family wishes to express their deep gratitude for all the prayers and support they have received from all the fans, friends and family around the world that Caleb has inspired.

"They would also like to thank the physicians and medical staff at both Aspen Valley Hospital and St. Mary's Hospital, Grand Junction for their care and dedication.

"At this time, the family will not be making any other public statements. They continue to decline interviews. Thank you for continuing to respect the family's privacy during this difficult time."

Moore, of Krum, Texas, was injured during the snowmobile freestyle final when he failed to complete a flip and his vehicle's skis clipped the landing, sending Moore flying over the handlebars and face-first into the ramp. His snowmobile then landed on top of him, knocking him unconscious, but Moore eventually walked off the course with assistance and was rushed to Aspen Valley Hospital with a concussion.

While there, doctors discovered bleeding around Moore's heart and had him airlifted to the hospital in Grand Junction for emergency surgery. It was reported that the cardiac injury led to "a secondary complication involving his brain" but further details weren't provided.

-- Kelly Burgess

Image of Caleb Moore at last year's Winter X Games courtesy of Eric Lars Bakke / ESPN Images

Snowmobiler Caleb Moore in critical condition after Winter X Games crash

Snowmobile rider Caleb Moore is in critical condition and clinging to life following a crash Thursday at the Winter X Games in Aspen, Colo.

"Caleb is not doing good at all," Moore's grandfather, Charles, told The Denver Post on Monday.  "The prognosis is not good at all. It's almost certain he's not going to make it."

Moore, 25, of Krum, Texas, was injured during the snowmobile freestyle final when he failed to complete a flip and his vehicle's skis clipped the landing, sending Moore flying over the handlebars and face-first into the ramp. His snowmobile then landed on top of him, knocking him unconscious, but Moore eventually walked off the course with assistance and was rushed to Aspen Valley Hospital with a concussion.

While there, doctors discovered bleeding around Moore's heart and had him airlifted to the hospital in Grand Junction for emergency surgery Friday. A family spokeswoman said Sunday that the cardiac injury led to "a secondary complication involving his brain" but didn't provide details.

"Caleb is in critical condition and is being closely monitored," family spokeswoman Chelsea Lawson told The Denver Post.

Prayers and well-wishes have been pouring in on Moore's Facebook fan page since the accident.

"The Moores want to express their gratitude to all of Caleb's fans, friends and family for their strong support and ask for continued prayers in the coming days," added Lawson. "The family will not be making any other public statements for the time being. Thank you for respecting the family's privacy during this difficult time."

-- Kelly Burgess

Image of Caleb Moore at last year's Winter X Games courtesy of Eric Lars Bakke / ESPN Images

Shaun White's slopestyle message is a triple cork 1440

With the Winter X Games a week away and occurring during the one-year countdown to the 2014 Winter Olympics at Sochi, Russia, the spotlight shines most brightly upon Shaun White.

Why?

Because this year's X Games in Aspen will serve as a proving grounds for aspiring Olympians, a place to issue statements. Also because White, whose two Olympic gold medals are in the halfpipe discipline, is placing added emphasis on slopestyle, which will debut as an Olympic sport in Sochi.

But mostly because White, who has not performed well in slopestyle during the previous two X Games, this week delivered a powerful statement in the form of a triple cork 1440 (that's three filps and four spins) performed in the terrain park at Breckenridge, Colo.

Only a few athletes can land this absurdly difficult trick on the slope course. White, apparently, has joined the crowd. Here are two videos posted Wednesday, showing White's practice sessions.  Understandably, next week in Aspen, the X Games slopestyle competition will replace the halfpipe competition as the marquee snowboarding event. (Hat tips to GrindTv.com and the Denver Post).

 
 

Shaun White buys Encinitas beach house for $3.85 million

Shaun White is the world's most successful pro snowboarder, with two Olympic halfpipe gold medals and multiple X Games medals as proof. He's also one of the world's top pro skateboarders.

But White, 26, also enjoys surfing, and to be closer to the waves he recently paid a reported $3.85 million for a 3,500-square-foot oceanfront home in Encinitas (North San Diego County).

The new surf pad, which sits on a bluff and features a private staircase leading to the beach, has three bedrooms and three bathrooms, floor-to-ceiling ocean views and a wraparound deck with a fire pit.

Click on the TMZ or Daily Mail stories to view images of White's new digs. Or check out the video posted below to see White talking about his fondness of surfing.

X Games crash lands RallyCross driver in hospital (video)

The X Games are all about thrills and spills, and on Friday RallyCross driver Toomas Heikinnen found out the hard way what happens when rally car meets steel support beams.

The Finnish driver undershot a 50-foot jump that features metal takeoff and landing areas. He was transported to a nearby hospital and determined to have suffered a left ankle fracture. A CT scan reveal no further injuries, an X Games spokesman said Friday night.

 

Viewers of the video will see the front end of Heikkinen's car collapsing upon impact at the downtown Los Angeles venue. The video does not show that Heikkinen managed to crawl from the car after the crash.

The accident occurred during RallyCross practice. The event final is Sunday, the fourth and final day of X Games competition, and you can bet that competitors will be hard on the pedal as they attempt to negotiate the same jump.

Heikkinen is not expected to compete in the final.

Neighborhood wants street renamed to honor memory of freeskiing star Sarah Burke

Residents of Midland in Ontario, Canada, have made a touching gesture to honor the memory of freeskiing star Sarah Burke, who died last month after an accident during training in a superpipe.

Burke grew up on Huron Street in Midland, and residents in the neighborhood, according to Simcoe.com, have requested that the town change the road's name to Sarah Burke Street.

"It would be a great tribute to one of Midland’s amazing, beautiful, young and inspirational athletes, who was taken from us way too soon," Rick and Debbie Dalziel stated in a letter to the city council, supported by the signatures of 11 neighbours. "Being friends and next-door neighbours of the Burke family for several years, we feel that Sarah and the entire family would be truly touched by this honour."

The entire street is in agreement regarding the name change but a councilman responded that the gesture may be too modest.

Still, many will agree that the name change ought to be granted, along with whatever larger gesture the council may come up with.

The request has been forwarded to the planning and development committee for review, after which it'll be brought to council for a decision.

For Lindsey Jacobellis, summertime blues are reason to sing

 

Snowboarding superstar Lindsey Jacobellis has an Olympic silver medal in the rollicking sport of snowboard-cross, and has dominated the event at the Winter X Games. She has loads of talent while on her board, but what else can she do?

Sing. (Well, you be the judge.)

Above is her remix (or parody) of Disney's "Tangled," which she titled "Curled." It takes viewers through the curly-haired athlete's summer, in anticipation of winter snow. It's creative and amusing, and probably not something her fans would have expected, but she will not be appearing on "American Idol" anytime soon. As a much older song goes, "Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow."

See more at YoBeat and Boardistan.

Shaun White chooses Northstar-at-Tahoe as home mountain

Snowboarding superstar Shaun White has chosen Northstar-at-Tahoe as his home mountain, and as part of the agreement he'll design an Olympics-caliber halfpipe.

White, a two-time Olympic gold medalist and perennial X Games star, signed a multiyear deal with Vail Resorts, which owns six ski areas in Colorado and California.

The company recently purchased Northstar, which is outside of Truckee, Calif., and near Lake Tahoe. Vail Resorts is planning to spend $30 million in capital improvements at Northstar.

As part of White's deal, Vail Resorts will donate $5 for every EPIC Pass it sells to Tennessee's St. Jude Children's Research Hospital,White's chosen charity. The company sold nearly 300,000 of the season passes last season.

Northstar was one of the resorts White visited frequently on family trips, as a kid.

"This feels like a homecoming because I have spent so much time riding at most of Vail Resorts' mountains," White said in a news release. "With Northstar as my home mountain, I now have the ideal place to train and continue to grow as an athlete and I am looking forward to all the possibilities this partnership brings."

-- Photo of Shawn White by Tomas Zuccareno/Shazamm/ESPN Images

Shaun White strikes X Games gold with amazing late run

Leave it to Shaun White, who has a flare for the dramatic, to show up at the X Games sporting a new mustache and goatee, enhancing his rock star persona, and wait until the final seconds of his event to swoop in and essentially swipe the gold medal from his longtime rival (see video).

 

Having unleashed a dizzying array of acrobatics on his final run during Saturday night's Skateboard Vert final, White drew a score of 93.00 to pull ahead of defending two-time champion Pierre Luc-Gagnon.

PLG, who seemed stunned by the late development, fell moments after dropping into the ramp and time on the jam session subsequently expired, prompting White to erupt in jubilation.

"I just wanted to put it down for all my fans who came out," White, 24, told ESPN's Keir Dillon immediately after his remarkable triumph. "I've been working so hard to get this season going ... I was working my way through my tricks and after that [720-degree spin] ... I had so much energy I was like, 'I'm making this happen; I don't care.' "

PLG had earned a seemingly unbeatable score of 91.66, largely on the merit of technically-difficulty heel flips and above-the-ramp spins, which included 540 variations and a 720. Bucky Lasek (87.66) was third.

White, whose final run was capped by a remarkable heel-flip body-varial front-side 540, not only erased PLG's hopes of a four-peat, but earned his first victory in the event since 2007. Thus, he reclaimed the medal from his friend and nemesis.

It was a momentous triumph because it gives White, whose ego demands success, a second gold medal in the summer X Games, proving the first was no fluke and that the two-sport athlete can out-perform the world's best on skateboarding's biggest stage.

"I'm beside myself," he said.

(White has two Olympic gold medals and 11 Winter X Games gold medals as a snowboarder.)

To be sure, it seems everything is going White's way these days. He just had a cameo in the Justin Timberlake movie "Friends With Benefits," and has all sorts of sponsorship deals in the works, including new signature clothing and apparel lines with Target, his primary sponsor.

But he put an incredible amount of work into his gold-medal performance. He had been practicing tirelessly on the vert ramp at Tony Hawk's house, and recently bought a ramp similar to the type used last summer at the X Games, and set the apparatus up at his home in Carlsbad, Calif.

"The quality of portable ramps has gotten so much better and I'm psyched to have one," he said earlier this week, in an ESPN story. "I'm pretty much the coolest kid on the street. The kids really look up to me now."

Bob Burnquist reclaims X Games gold in Skateboarding Big-Air; Mitchie Brusco, 14, is fifth

The future of Skateboarding Big-Air may belong to people like 14-year-old Mitchie Brusco, but for now the X Games gold medal belongs to Bob Burnquist. 

Brusco, invited to the X Games after recently becoming only the second person to have landed a 900 on the MegaRamp (Burnquist was the first), finished admirably in fifth place during Friday night's marquee competition at Staples Center in Los Angeles. But it was Burnquist who stole the show and reclaimed a title held for the past two years by perennial rival Jake Brown.

Burnquist, 34, who hobbled into the competition with an array of injuries, took the lead on his second of five runs by performing a switch 180 over the 70-foot gap of the MegaRamp, then sticking a double-grab 540 above the quarterpipe wall. That was good for a score of 92.66, placing him ahead of Adam Taylor.

Burnquist, who won the Big-Air gold in 2007-08, matched his winning score on his fourth run with a switch 540/double-grab 540 combo (see video).

 

Brown, 36, who had been Burnquist's nemesis for the past two years, nailing the winning run at the end of both competitions, was unable to complete a routine on either of his five runs. He fell while attempting a back-flip over the gap on his final run. Taylor ended up in second with a score of 89.66, reaching the podium for the first time in the event. Brazil's Edgard Pereria was third (87.00).

Afterward, Burnquist said he was just happy to have completed a scoring run on an apparatus as difficult as the MegaRamp.

It was a difficult night indeed, as only six full routines were completed -- two by Burnquist -- out of 40 attempts by the eight finalists.

As for Bruscoe, the youngest competitor at the X Games, he turned in an admirable fifth-place performance, on the merit of a backside 36 over the gap, to a 540 over the quarterpipe wall.

Bruscoe, who stands only 5 feet 1 and weighs just 95 pounds, was not disappointed with his performance against the daredevil sport's luminaries. He told sideline reporter Jenn Brown: "I'm feeling good. I didn't expect to do anything; I'm just happy to be here."

Fans can expect a lot more from "Little Tricky" in the years to come.