American Shaun White wins halfpipe gold at World Cup

American Shaun White served notice that it will take something truly spectacular for anyone to beat him for 2010 Olympic gold in snowboard's halfpipe competition.

White, who rarely competes on the World Cup circuit, won the World Cup event Saturday at West Vancouver's Cypress Mountain with a score of 47.3 points.

Current World Cup leader Ryoh Aono of Japan was second with a score of 44.8 and Swiss boarder Iouri Podladtchikov finished third with 44.3 points.

Three Canadians qualified for the final field of 12 boarders. Justin Lamoureux of Squamish, B.C., was the top Canadian in fifth. Brad Martin of Ancaster, Ont., finished in seventh and Jeff Batchelor from Oakville, Ont., came in eighth.

In the women's, Kelly Clark clinched a gold-medal sweep in the halfpipe for the United States. Clark won with a score of 42.6 points, Jiayu Liu of China was second with 39.0 and Hannah Teter, also from the U.S., picked up the bronze with 38.8 points.

No Canadian advanced to the women's finals. Sarah Conrad finished seventh in her qualifying group on Friday and 13th overall, but only the top six from each qualifying group advanced to Saturday's final.

The event on Cypress, which will host the snowboard and freestyle skiing events during next year's Olympic Winter Games, is being used as a test event for 2010. So far, Canada has one medal at this event. On Friday, Mike Robertson picked up silver in the men's snowboardcross.

Canadians picked up five of a possible six gold medals at the freestyle World Cup last weekend on Cypress.