CAN THE ‘TOMATO’ FLY ONCE AGAIN?
A few months after a terrible injury, the world’s most famous snowboarder is back with a new coach, training regimen and attitude — but the same old thirst for gold
MAMMOTH LAKES >> One of the biggest faces of the 2018 Winter Games looked like bloody hell just a few months ago.
The “Flying Tomato” took on new meaning in October after snowboarder Shaun White smacked into the edge of an icy wall during a gruesome training-run accident in New Zealand.
White needed 62 stitches after practicing a four-rotation trick he probably will attempt in order to contend for an Olympic title in the men’s halfpipe that gets under way with qualifying runs Tuesday (Monday night, Pacific time) in Pyeongchang, South Korea.
The mishap occurred a few weeks after another training crash had sent the two-time Olympic champion to the hospital with a bruised hip and injured liver. White also had surgery on his left ankle in 2016, which a few months later
led to his worst result at the Winter X Games since he was 13.
Just qualifying for his fourth Olympics seemed like a challenge after White spilled more blood than he had ever seen gush out of him.
But hold on a moment. “I would love to feel like an underdog but I just don’t,” White, 31, said recently at Mammoth Mountain. “Ever since I could remember I have been expected to do well — not only from the media and the fans, but even more so myself. Underdog maybe in skateboarding.”
He will have to worry about that if White attempts to qualify for the 2020 Tokyo Games when skateboarding makes its debut.
For now, he remains one of the halfpipe’s leading men if no longer occupying his own stratosphere. Maturity, humility and a thirst for winning have led the crossover star from Carlsbad to the icy ledge where he hopes to whirl and twirl into Olympic history.
Stiff competition
But he has company. Japan’s Ayumu Hirano, the 2014 Olympic silver medalist, has become the sport’s favorite with a beguiling sequence of spins and rotations that no one can match. He won the Winter X Games title Jan. 29 after landing back-to-back 1440-degree spins.
In the same competition, reigning Olympic champion Iouri Podladtchikov suffered a broken nose after a horrific crash while White chose to rest for Korea instead of facing the world’s top dogs.
Other potential Olympic
medalists include Australia’s Scotty James and Japan’s Taku Hiraoka and Yuto Totsuka.
White is “going into these Olympic Games as an underdog whether he knows it or not,” said Mark Sullivan, founder of Snowboard
magazine. “There are people out there who have runs outside of his reach. If they can get the courage to go a little bit faster they are going to outride Shaun at his own game.”
It’s a new position for White, but coach JJ Thomas expects his rider to lean on past experiences to succeed — particularly ones that ended in failure.
Thomas knocked a 15-year-old White out of the 2002 Olympics qualifying and then was part of an American sweep at the Salt Lake City Games.
White watched and learned.
He has dominated the sport since then and has won a record 15 gold medals at the X Games and Winter X Games, including two in skateboarding.
“He’s taken it three levels from where he started,” said Bud Keene, who coached White to Olympic gold medals in 2006 and ’10. “He believed himself to be that game-changer early on and he fulfilled that prophecy.”
But everything fell apart four years ago at the Sochi Games to pierce White’s invincibility. He ambitiously planned to win medals in the halfpipe and the new slopestyle event before withdrawing from the latter competition because of safety issues with the course.
Then White finished fourth in the halfpipe as the United States failed to medal in the men’s event for the first time in history. The humbling result devastated him: “It’s kind of like you have a scar from falling off a bike, it’s just with you forever,” he told NBC Sports last year.
But something good happened from the experience that still haunts him. White found clarity in his life.
“I would say sitting here today I’m much more of a happier person and more comfortable of who I am and what I’ve accomplished and what I intend to accomplish than ever before,” White said when asked if he has become the man he hoped to be.
“In so many aspects I would say yes. In others, no, nobody’s perfect. It’s funny, you get to these goals in life and it’s not always what it seems. You can be the Olympic champion but you sacrifice things along the way. It’s all up to your moral compass of is it worth it? Is it still something that you need to pursue?”
Yes, it is.
White returned from a layoff after Sochi with a new management team, physical therapist and Thomas as his coach. He also started a regular training regimen that includes mountain biking, weightlifting and gymnastics exercises.
“Defeat or failure is probably the biggest motivator,” Thomas said. “Nothing will make you succeed more than taking a few lumps. An unsatisfied, fourth-place Shaun White is a dangerous spot for all the other guys.”
New training site
White has trained at Mammoth, where he is now a minority owner, instead of hiding away at a privately built halfpipe in Colorado that he had used the previous two Olympics.
“He doesn’t feel the need to sequester himself from his peers anymore,” said Keene, his former coach. “As he has matured he’s allowed people in more.”
Much has been made of his relationship with Toby Miller, 17, who White calls snowboarding’s next breakout star. They have trained together this season.
Miller joined White in Austria in late November when the snowboard king looked to salvage his Olympic dreams by regaining his nerve in the halfpipe.
A few weeks later, White took third place in his first competition back since the accident in New Zealand. A week after that, he fell during the first round and failed to make the final of the second U.S. qualifier.
Then came an Olympic qualifying event in mid-January in Colorado. The snowboarder entered the competition with more questions than ever.
Yet, White soared above the doubts. He earned a perfect 100 points on a run that included the daunting “cab double cork 1440” to advance to Korea on a Rocky Mountain high.
“It just felt like I was on the right track and all this hard work I put in was paying off,” White said in Mammoth. “The Olympics will be awesome but that will forever be a highlight in my career and in my life.”
Wait a minute, though. No one is saying White plans to double-flip off the slopes any time soon. The snowboarder has flirted with the idea of trying for the 2022 Olympics in Beijing when he would be 35.
“If he wants to nothing will stop him,” Thomas said.
Not after what White has endured this past year.