The announcers were hyped as 16-year-old Yuto Totsuka took off on his run, looking to see extreme amplitude from Totsuka: “We won’t even see him on the radar!”

And then on Totsuka’s first upswing of his third and final run of the men’s halfpipe competition, he flew about 5 meters into the air, came crashing down board first on the pipe’s edge, slid down the pipe and came to a stop in the middle, a hush coming upon the crowd.

Totsuka was sitting upright, but eventually, they carted him off on a stretcher. Would this affect the other skateboarders? How about American Shaun White, who only four months ago had a similar accident in New Zealand, his face slamming into the top of the halfpipe lip, leaving him a bloody mess.

The torch was on the verge of being passed to Ayumu Hirano, the 19-year-old phenom from Niigata, Japan, who replicated the maneuvers in the second run that got him gold at the Winter X-Games only two weeks ago, his score of 95.25 was good enough for gold.

White’s first ride got him 94.25, which had him in second place ahead of 23-year-old Scotty James of Australia and behind Hirano. But White, who missed the podium finishing fourth at Sochi, didn’t want silver. He desperately wanted to add a third Olympic gold to his long snowboarding career as he set up for his final ride.

Hirano had nailed two consecutive 1440s in his second ride, the first to do so in the Olympics, which got him his 95.25. White had never had a successful ride of two fourteens, so the question was, could he do it in his third and final ride.

And he did.

The 31-year-old pulled a magic ride out of his black astronaut helmet, and recorded a score of 97.75. White raised his arms ripped off his goggles off, and let loose a primal scream that was heard all the way back to his hometown in San Diego.

The torch was still in the hands of the ancient 31-year-old snowboarder – Shaun White.