BUTTERMILK MOUNTAIN, Colorado — It took an Olympic-sized effort to win gold Saturday in the Buttermilk halfpipe, as the third stop of Shaun White’s Snow League tour saw unfinished business play out in the first snowboard competition since the Milano Cortina Games. With the help of back to b ack 1440s, Olympic bronze medalist Ryusei Yamada triumphed in the 22-foot pipe with best-of-three runs against gold medalist Yuto Totsuka. “I’m glad to get my first victory here in an event created by Shaun White,” Yamada said through an interpreter following his final run. Both men fell on the third runs, but Yamada, whose helmet broke from the crash, completed four hits to Totsuka’s two.  Clean riding catapulted Coloradan Jake Pates to third over New Zealand’s Cam Melville Ives. Their final heat also went to three runs. On the women’s side, 16-year-old Sara Shimizu edged Maddie Mastro of Mammoth Mountain in a tense final. Shimizu, a rising snowboard star in Japan,, won X Games gold here one month ago and brought that kind of confidence into her entire weekend. Sena Tomita, the women’s Snow League points leader to date, finished third ahead of countrywoman Rise Kudo. Style, amplitude and overall impression were part of the six judges’ criteria. For Mastro, who repeated her results from the inaugural Snow League event one year ago, silver was sweet after a disappointing Olympics performance. “This is a win for me,” Mastro said. “Every contest I enter I want to win and so there’s always that piece of me that leaves me hungry for the win. I want to stand on the top of the box always. That never changes, but big picture, I’m really really proud of myself.” Maddie Mastro, left, said her silver medal felt like a win at the Snow League finals in Aspen on Saturday. Her best run included a double crippler indy and frontside double cork 1080. Sara Shimizu of Japan, center, won gold with the day’s highest women’s score, a 94.5, which was the run she executed at the Olympics. Sena Tomita, the women’s Snow League points leader to date, finished third. Credit: Photo by Jenny Lang/For Snow League The Snow League debuted here in March 2025, and the first event kicked off the four competition series that concludes later this month in Laax, Switzerland. Halfpipe skiing was added at the second stop during January in China, and will be part of the finals; scheduling didn’t allow it to be included here at Buttermilk, organizers said.  Still, U.S. halfpipe skiers Nick Goepper, Hanna Faulhaber and Birk Irving, were prominent spectators during the Buttermilk event. Introducing different ways to win and push the sport were behind Shaun White’s initial push with this series, which aims to move beyond FIS-imposed rules and hearken back more to snowboarding’s (and freeskiing’s) early years. In the men’s final, Yamada and Totsuka agreed to feature just a single trick in a one-hit contest, something they’d also done at the Snow League China stop. Yamada had the higher scoring switch dub alley oop on Saturday. The uniqueness of this concept seemed a crowd pleaser and a way to progress the sport, as was the requirement that riders drop in on both sides of the pipe on different runs. “This event is so revolutionary for snowboarding,” Jake Pates said. “It’s pushing the level, it’s adding so many different variables to the sport. … The level of riding is so high. This is the new age of snowboarding.” If each heat goes to three runs, riders could potentially put down nine runs over the course of the day, which is seen as a test of stamina. Pates’ teammate, Olympian and teenager Alessandro Barbieri, who was fourth here last year, said having to drop from both sides has made him a better rider. Snow League’s format, whose bent hearkens back to snowboarding’s pre-FIS days, brings more strategy and skills progression in play, athletes said. “Snowboarding continues to put boundaries on the world stage,” Shaun White said in a prepared statement. “What we saw in Italy was historic, not just in terms of difficulty, but in the way these athletes inspire the world.” Mental health top of mind Snow League athletes in a Thursday conference spoke of enjoying having a post-Olympics event to focus on rather than seeing their season end abruptly after the Games. “Like, you don’t just go to the Olympics and come home and that’s the end of your season,” said Maddie Mastro. The post-Olympic slump for athletes is real and pronounced when the competition season ends abruptly after the Games’ flame is extinguished. She said it was nice to come home, reset and then have something to look forward to. “So I’m really grateful that we have two more stops of Snow League and I think it’s also great because everyone gets another opportunity to display and show all the hard work we’ve done for four years.” As was true at the Olympics, mental health was top of mind and shared by three of the Snow League athletes, Mastro, Pates and Maddy Shaffrick of Steamboat Springs, who just missed qualifying on Friday. Shaffrick said her early childhood memories were created by watching athletes, including Torino Olympics silver medalist and Aspen resident Gretchen Bleiler, compete in the Buttermilk pipe. Now at age 31, having memories of her own from X Games, Grand Prix and inspirational comeback, she’s still in awe. “Yeah there’s an energy in that halfpipe that I think is really powerful and you can feel it,” Shaffrick said. Follow Madeleine Osberger on X, @madski99 The post Americans hold their own in Snow League halfpipe return appeared first on Park Record. ...read more read less