Gulf News

Evergreen White makes it 100 not out

AMERICAN TURNS ATTENTION TO COMPETE IN SKATEBOARD­ING AT TOKYO OLYMPICS IN 2020

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haun White stared down the half-pipe before his final Olympic run and had no doubt what would happen next. “I honestly knew I had it,” White said. “I knew I had to put it down.”

Put it down he did, soaring and spinning yesterday through a half-dozen near flawless tricks — including back-to-back 1440s for the first time in his life — en route to his record third half-pipe gold medal. White won with a score of 97.75 and wept at the bottom of the half-pipe. It marked White’s return to the top of the sport after a disappoint­ing fourth-place finish at the 2014 Sochi Games.

White’s gold was also the 100th overall for the US in the Winter Olympics — all four American golds this year have been won by snowboarde­rs.

Within minutes of winning a landmark third Olympic gold with a stunning performanc­e, White was looking to the future. The American will be 35 by the time the next Winter Olympics is held in Beijing in 2022 but his focus is on a closer goal.

He wants to go to the Summer Olympics in Tokyo in 2020 to compete in skateboard­ing, which will be making its Olympic debut in Japan.

White’s belief that he can challenge the world’s best skateboard­ers in Tokyo is not as outlandish as it might sound at first.

As his snowboardi­ng career was taking off, White was also competing as a profession­al skateboard­er, winning Vert gold at the 2007 X Games, a

year after his first Olympic gold in the half-pipe.

In doing so, he became the first man to compete in and win gold medals at both the summer and winter X Games.

Muscle memory S

2 4 1 5 4

B

3 2 2 3 3

Total

12 11 7 11 10

“I am excited about it, the motivation will be there, it is something new, less gear, new competitor­s,” White told reporters France Austria Sweden Italy S Korea 2 2 2 1 1 1 1 1 1 0 2 1 0 1 1 5 4 3 3 2 after the half-pipe final.

“It is like this muscle memory as many of the tricks here are similar to skateboard­ing, just a translatio­n into a smaller board and not being strapped in.” If White wins a skateboard­ing medal in Tokyo, he would become only the sixth person to claim medals at both winter and summer Games. The most recent athlete to do so was American Lauryn Williams, in sprinting and bobsleigh.

White will be able to rely on his long-time friend and mentor Tony Hawk for encouragem­ent.

Hawk, widely regarded as the greatest skateboard­er in history and a pioneer for many of the tricks in the sport, first met White when he was nine years old. “Tony, thank you for being such a great inspiratio­n for me and such a good role model for me to look up to. He told me to come win this thing and then sail off into the sunset and never touch a snowboard again,” White said.

“I hope he wishes me luck because I think I am going to go on to skateboard­ing.”

 ?? AP ?? American Shaun White jumps during the men’s half-pipe finals at Phoenix Snow Park at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchan­g yesterday.
AP American Shaun White jumps during the men’s half-pipe finals at Phoenix Snow Park at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchan­g yesterday.
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