Shaun White ‘tricks’ his way past Skate Vert rivals

Shaun White lived up to the hype surrounding his return to the Dew Tour on Sunday at the Wendy’s Invitational, posting a 93.5 in the third of his four finals runs to top defending tour champion Bucky Lasek (91.5) for the win in Skate Vert in front of 16,115 at the Rose Garden.

He did so with an array of creative combinations of flip tricks and spins that elicited the loudest crowd response of the afternoon, including a frontside fakie 540 to fakie 540 cab to 720 and the “Armadillo” — a frontside heelflip body varial 540 — a trick he debuted in a second-place finish at the 2010 Summer X Games.

With the win, White avenged that second-place finish behind Pierre-Luc Gagnon, who became the first skater to three-peat the X Games Skate Vert competition. Gagnon won the Dew Cup in 2008 and remains atop the tour standings despite his third-place finish (90.0) Sunday.

— Excerpt from OregonLive.com, August 15, 2010