By Stephen Alexander

JEFFREY BASINGER / PORTLAND TRIBUNE

Shaun White makes a run at the Rose Garden during the Dew Tour Wendy's Invitational.
Shaun White is a superstar of extreme sports. He is not extreme sports’ Babe Ruth; that title belongs to White’s mentor Tony Hawk. White is definitely at the level of a Lou Gehrig or a Joe DiMaggio, though.

On Sunday afternoon at the Rose Garden, the two-time Olympic gold medalist in snowboarding and X Games skateboarding gold medalist added one more victory to his legend in the Dew Tour Wendy’s Invitational skate vert final.

White scored 93.50 to defeat last year's winner, Bucky Lasek of Baltimore, Md., who scored 91.50. Canadian Pierre-Luc Gagnon took third at 90.00.

After the win, White was asked if he was gunning for Hawk’s prestige in extreme sports.

“What, Tony Hawk has guns? Wait a minute,” White joked.

He went on to say, “Tony Hawk is from a different generation. When he was in school, skateboarding was the lamest thing. Now, it’s like if you don’t skateboard, you don’t wear skate clothing, you’re not the cool kid.”

The 23-year-old White was undeniably the cool kid at the Rose Garden on Sunday.

The vert course was a half-pipe with 18-foot slopes at either end. Skaters dropped into the ramp from two stories above the ground. Scoring was based on the judges' overall impression of the run, including the number, difficulty, originality and variety of successful tricks. Flow, smoothness, execution, style, the use of the vert ramp and linking tricks together also were factors.

The 10 skaters first competed in a five-man, 12-minute jam (in which skaters had four 30 -econd runs, going one after another). The top five moved on to the final jam session, skating in the same format.

There was not an empty seat in the half of the Rose Garden where the event took place. So many people came, the Dew Tour seated more than 1,000 fans in the restricted areas with obstructed visibility.