Located seven miles away from Silverton Mountain, Red Bull constructed a perfect halfpipe by dropping explosives from a helicopter to trigger landslides before having the world’s best pipe-shaper come in to finish up the job. You read that right – they threw bombs from helis. Finally, they added a 7,000 block foam pit at the bottom of the half pipe for Shaun to practice his insane/amazing gravity-defying tricks into. All this so that White could develop his latest moves in complete secrecy, hidden away from the prying eyes of his competitors. Yeah, we’re blown away, too.

Check out RedBull’s site here dedicated to the secret project to watch Shaun’s new moves and learn about how Project X all came together.

Lindsey Vonn didn’t just become the first American woman to win the Olympic downhill, with a time of 1 minute 44.19 seconds. She did it with a pestering shin injury which she explained was very painful. Vonn edged out her American teammate Julia Mancuso by .56 seconds. After Vonn crossed the finish line she slid onto her back and started yelling and screaming in joy. She didn’t have it locked there yet, she had to watch a few more girls crash and burn before she was officially awarded the gold. Not only is she a gold medalist but Vonn is super hot, as seen by these pictures below, Wowzers. Congrats to all the other Americans who won gold last night setting a single day record, Shaun White, Apolo Anton Ohno, Shani Davis, and of course Vonn.

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Rome SDS, the Waterbury, Vermont-based snowboard company, recently unveiled next year’s installment of the annual Addictive Collection: a series of three boards designed by a trio of artists. Whereas virtually every other board is a composite of many people’s input, these boards benefit from the complete control of Rome photographer and art director Mike Paddock.

The first of the series (above) is Paddock’s own, the 155 Agent Rocker, is based loosely on an H. L. Mencken quote: “There comes a time when a man must spit on his hands, hoist the black flag and begin slitting throats.” To that particularly macabre end, it opts for a red and black palate and copious blood-like drips. And like the 157 below, it features the new Rocker shape with camber tips and a rocker mid-section for the most all-mountain fun.

The 156 Agent is the brainchild of former Rome employee Al Engleheart, and features a summer’s worth of Polaroids taken of his food. The meat-heavy fare sits on a pink checkered pattern in what they’ve dubbed a “smorgasbord of shred.”
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1,200 students, staff and faculty at the University of Alberta unofficially smash the Guinness World Record for most players in a single dodgeball game at the Universiade Pavilion better known as “The Butterdome” in Edmonton, Alta. on February 5, 2010. The former record was 450. The event was organized by the U of A students’ union. Video by Ryan Jackson / Edmonton Journal

So this past weekend I was watching Sports Nation on ESPN and they had an awesome tournament of the best in-game posterized dunks. Of course Vince Carters dunk in the Olympics was held out of the competition because it wouldn’t be fair. The hosts rocked Vince Carter Olympic number 9 jerseys and played his dunk about 700 times through the show which you can see here if you never saw it. Anyway throughout the show they did other little stories and one was back board breaking. They showed Shaq’s rim breakers, then the king Darryl Dawkins dunks. Then they showed something I never seen before and I don’t know how the hell I’ve never heard or seen anything about it, being a huge NBA fan. It was from a Nike exhibition game in Italy in 1986. Jordan completely explodes and demolishes the rim while posterizing some poor Italian in the process, raining glass over the opposing team. I guess the reason noone ever saw it was because the game was never televised and this is footage captured by a bystander. Either way enjoy Jordan bringing the thunder, accompanied with an awesome 1980’s trumpet tooting tune.

Today, the folks at Sports Illustrated have unveiled their Swimsuit Issue cover model as Brooklyn Decker, wife of tennis star Andy Roddick.

The world of the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue is far more cloak and dagger than you’d ever guess. The issue is kept under wraps until the day before it’s released and even the models don’t know who’s going to be on the cover.

Apparently everyone just shows up at the beach, looks hot for some photos and they get surprised like the rest of us when the magazine hits the stands. In Brooklyn’s case, we’re particularly impressed by the accomplishment, since half of her swimsuit isn’t even on properly. Brooklyn is also going to be at Fashion Week 2010, hopefully modeling off some similar bikinis. You can get a run down of the events and schedule of the event found here.

With the recent announcement that we are about to be graced with a modern version of everyone’s all-time favorite hoops game, NBA JAM, its got everyone wondering what it may look like. There is no doubt that technological advances have made graphics seem life like on recent titles like NBA 2K10 and NBA Live 10. So much so, that it has some people looking back at how far basketball video games have come graphically. Check out this cool video showing the evolution of basketball video games. Disappointingly it doesn’t have Dr.J vs. Bird, but pretty much everything else is in there:

Well since yesterday was the last day of football until next year, I thought I would share the truth behind the great game of football. Studies show that there is actually only 11 minutes on average of actual gameplay in a NFL football game, and of course my girlfriend manages to be walking in front of the television 7 of those 11 minutes. To break it down, we got: 67 minutes of players just hanging out, 17 minutes of replays, 11 minutes of gameplay, and 3 seconds of girls with pom-poms shaking their big boobs.

Above is a sortable chart to see how every minute is accounted for in a sampling of four recent NFL games on different networks. Each frame represents 1% of the broadcast, excluding commercials. I know it is a little hard to see but pretty much that first green strip at the top is actual gameplay, the rest is everything else that makes up the 3 hours of an nfl game.
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Grant Gunderson is a Mt. Baker Washington-based ski photographer. His work has appeared in magazines like Powder, Skiing, and Backcountry, and he is the photo editor of The Ski Journal. As an adrenaline junkie hooked on the great outdoors & anything with beauty & danger as bed fellows , I think this work is outrageously awesome! Love the way he has used daylight to balance flash , super strong work, and super strong photography. These photos are just the tip of the iceberg and I recommend you checking out Gunderson’s website found here for more gnarly photography.

Adam Ü tele skiing powder at Revelstoke mountain resort.
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