White wants one last hurrah at 2020 Olympics
WITH NOTHING LEFT TO PROVE ON HIS CV, AMERICAN SNOWBOARDING STAR PLANS TO GO BACK TO HIS ROOTS — SKATEBOARDING
White placed himself among America’s greatest winter Olympians after defeating a loaded field by making the final run of the contest the best.
S haun White’s latest masterful performance in the halfpipe was barely five hours old. He hadn’t yet received his Olympic gold medal. But the 31-year old snowboarder already knew what the next chapter of unparalleled athletic career will look like: yet another Olympics.
But if all goes as planned, he’ll be packing a different wardrobe next time because White will leave Pyeongchang and began preparations to compete in the next Summer Olympics, hosted by Tokyo in 2020.
The International Olympic Committee voted in 2016 to add skateboarding to the summer programme, something White had dreamed about for years.
“It would mean the world to me to compete in skating,” he said earlier this week in Pyeongchang. “It’d be great.”
While snowboarding has brought White fame and fortune, it was actually skateboarding that launched his athletic career and first brought him any sort of notoriety. He was buddies with Tony Hawk before his 10th birthday, was a professional skateboarder at 17 — before he was an Olympic snowboarder — and even launched a skateboarding video game in 2010. He was the first athlete to compete in — and win — both the Summer and Winter X Games, and now he wants to follow his third snowboarding Olympic gold with the first skateboarding Olympic gold.
“Man, it’s wild. I assumed at some point in my lifetime, skateboarding would get into the Olympics,” he said, “but I’m just happy that it’s come at a time when I feel physically and mentally capable of actually competing and pursuing that goal and dream.”
He won’t be the first to do both. More than 130 athletes, in fact, have participated in the Winter and Summer Games — including 10 Americans — but only five have won medals in both. Eddie Eagan of the United States was the only one to win gold in both. He competed in boxing in 1920 and ‘24 and bobsled in 1932.
More recently, hurdler Lolo Jones represented the United States at the Summer Games in 2008 and ‘12 before switching to bobsled in 2014. And sprinter Lauryn Williams competed in three Summer Olympics before jumping in the bobsled in 2014.
White realises that his post Pyeongchang training will be tricky. Even though snowboarding tends to be a young man’s sport, he’s not close to retiring. And he knows that he can’t afford to abandon his training while he focuses on skateboarding.
Too much fun
“I’ll have to make a hard decision at that point,” he said. “To be at the top of the game of snowboarding and then decide all of a sudden to let my competitors have two years of practice on me while I pursue skateboarding ... it’s a big decision. It’s a lot to sacrifice to go for something like that so I’m going to make that choice in time.”
And while his sights are firmly set on the Tokyo Sum- mer Games and he’ll surely devote much of the next two years to preparations, he also knows what lies beyond 2020: a return to the Winter Games, set for Beijing in 2022 — when White will be 35 years old, still spinning and flipping in the pipe.
He says he’s having too much fun to walk away, a far cry from how felt four years ago. After winning gold at the 2006 and 2010 Olympics, White stumbled and finished in fourth at the Sochi Games, which served as daily motivation these past four years. “I’ve kind of, like, found the love of the sport again.”
In last Wednesday’s final run, White posted a score of 97.75, a performance significantly more difficult and measurably more dazzling than anything he’d done before on an Olympic stage.
White was 19 and raggedy when he won his first gold medal, 23 and exultant when he won his second, 27 and corporate when he suffered letdown and arrived at a professional fork. On Wednesday afternoon on PyeongChang Halfpipe, White completed his competitive revival at 31 with a reinforcement and a declaration. He remains the unquestioned greatest snowboarder ever, and he is once again the unquestioned greatest snowboarder in the world, now with a magnificent final chapter.
White placed himself among America’s greatest winter Olympians after defeating a loaded field by making the final run of the contest the best run of the contest.
In his earlier Olympic triumphs, White could be assured none of his competitors had the ability to approach his best runs. That wasn’t the case this time, not against 19-year-old Japanese sensation Ayumu Hirano, Australian Scotty James and even countryman Ben Ferguson.
White stood on the top of pipe for his third trailing Hirano, who had posted a 95.25 in his second run, then fallen in his third. He was the last man on the mountain. He adjusted his goggles and dropped in.
White destroyed the run. He hit consecutive 1440s and back-to-back 1260s, one of those with a flair called the Tomahawk. When he crossed the line, White raised both arms in the air.
He watched and waited. Silence replaced mayhem. The score flashed: 97.75.