By Xu Zheng

    TURIN, Feb. 12 (Xinhuanet) -- American Shaun White cruised to the gold medal in the men's halfpipe snowboard at the Turin Olympics here on Sunday.

    White claimed the title with 46.8 points, fellow American DannyKass took the silver at 44.0, while Finland's Markku Koski won bronze with 41.5.

    Competitors have to take two runs in the final and are ranked according to their best score of two runs, but White didn't need asecond run as his amazing first run with a back-to-back 1080s landing, which earned him 46.8 points, was good enough for a gold medal. He only managed 26.6 points in his second routine run.

    White had a nightmare start on Sunday as he missed one of the six automatic berths into the final after he landed badly in his first qualifying run.

    He then rebounded with an excellent second qualifying run to move on to the final round.

    Kass led the 12 riders after the qualifying runs but failed in the first final run as he only managed 20.8 points. However, he did a wonderful job in the second and collected 44.0 points for the second place, beating Koski, who scored 41.5 in the first run,into the third place.

    Koski tried to save his silver medal in the second run, but only had 31.4 points.

    World champion Antti Autti of Finland, who was second after thequalifying stage, only finished fifth with 39.1 points. Enditem