Shaun White and Louis Vito went (pretty much) straight from guest spots on the US version of “Strictly Ballroom” (“Dancing with the Stars”) to the Copper Mountain Grand Prix. White took first spot (helped by putting in one extra points scoring move), followed by Vito, with Kelly Clark and Gretchen Bleiler securing the women’s placings.

It looks like Double Corkscrews are the move for the upcoming Winter Olympics, with back-to-back Double Corks being THE move to make – if you can land them. A lot of well known riders failed to make their runs clean, poor light making spotting the landings hard. Kevin Pearce and Mason Aguirre were among the big names who couldn’t carry their excellent form from the practice sessions into competition. Vito stacked at the end of his first run, but pulled it back in his second. However, White matched Vitos opening double corks, and his consistency paid off. Consistency, which having your own private snow halfpipe to practice in (courtesy of his sponsor, Quiksilver), should be the key to White’s Olympic hopes.

Kelly Clark hit the ice hard on her second run, but a big frontside 9 capped a highly technical first foray into the pipe. Bleiler had to overcome a poor first attempt, which ended in a bad fall. Her second run hardly pushed the limits, but was good enough to for the Olympic Silver medallist to take second place

Here’s Justin Gunson’s video of the Halfpipe Finals, at TWSnow – nice use of Zeps ‘Good Times, Bad Times’ on the soundtrack.