Shaun White
At the 2012 Winter X Games in Aspen this past Sunday daredevil Shaun White proved once again why he’s the snowboarding’s Babe Ruth by scoring the SuperPipe’s first-ever perfect 100. And he did it on a bad ankle. He had turned during Friday’s practice runs and the injury forced him to withdraw from the previous event, the Slopestyle, as well as Saturday’s SuperPipe practice runs. There was some doubt he’d show for the main event.
Despite the bum leg and stiffer competition that has come with SuperPipe’s evolution, White won it with his totals in the first two rounds. What could have been an easy and cautious victory third-run lap became an exclamation point that stunned the crowd and the judges. White hit rocket-type amplitude that broke his own previous gold-medal record and displayed masterful acrobatics: an 18-foot backside air, a 17-foot frontside double cork1080, an 11-foot switch frontside double cork 1080, a 14-foot frontside cork 540, a 13-foot backside double cork 1260 and a 12-foot frontside double cork 1260, which was the first back-to-back double cork in Winter X Games history.
“I didn’t know if I was going to be able to compete,” said White, 25, whose five consecutive gold medals in the event is the record. “I was a little frustrated and I had all this pent up energy and adrenaline. So when the doctors cleared me I guess I just exploded.”
That series of events—being physically restricted for medical reasons and then breaking free with awesome, high-flying bursts of energy—is a theme that seems to run steadily through White’s life. He was an aggressive fighter from birth. He had to be. Born with a heart condition, Tetralogy of Fallot, White underwent two operations before his second birthday. Even then, doctors feared there was a chance his heart would not beat on its own. To this day, metal plates inside his chest make MRIs difficult for the often bruised and battered superstar. “It’d be like putting a metal pot lid inside a microwave,” White says, in his characteristic dismissive style regarding the hazards of his career. “When I’m learning something I really don’t care how hard I slam,” he adds. White also had to wear leg braces until he was five to correct severe bowed legs.
“He just exploded after that,” says his older brother, Jesse, 33, who introduced White to extreme skateboarding. He fondly recalls his little brother, at just 6, doing backflips off a ramp into a trampoline in the backyard of their Del Mar, California, home. Flash forward a single year and White would secure his first skateboarding sponsorship.
That was the start of White’s ascension. But those early years were lean ones for he and his family, who traveled to competitions for each of their kids in a beat up white 1964 Econoline van they called “Big Mo”. White’s mother, Cathy, was a waitress and his father, Roger, worked for the public utility. The $20,000 a year they were averaging in equipment investments, entrance fees and transportation costs to meet their sons challenging schedule was a major stretch—and that was just for him. Older brother Jesse, now White’s manager, and younger sister, Kari, 27, also competed at advanced levels. Kari even became the 2000 US Open Junior Halfpipe Champ.
An even bigger break than the early sponsorship came when White was 9 and he caught the eye of extreme skateboarding legend Tony Hawk, who mentored him until he turned pro at 17. For six years Hawk and White toured together and Hawk points out that White is the first athlete ever to compete and medal in both the Summer and Winter X Games in two different sports. “White is he most amazing athlete on the planet,” Hawk says.
The trips in the white van also brought the White family 3.5 hours north of their home to Mammoth, CA, where they indulged their passion for skiing. That’s where White caught the snowboarding bug that would launch his second career. It was when White was 6, the same year he’d learned to skateboard. Mom Cathy introduced her son to snowboarding simply as a way to keep him from killing himself on skis but within the first afternoon he was already adapting his skateboarding skills and was in the air.
“He was just a natural at everything,” Jesse says. “He was hitting jumps and landing them on his second day.” Proof positive is the fact that White won the race and halfpipe events at the Southern California Conference finals (12-and-under category) just a year later. The rest—having been sponsored to turn pro in a second sport by Burton at just 13, two Olympic gold medals, 17 Winter X Games medals (12 of them gold) and the $10 million in yearly endorsements—may be history but White says he wouldn’t have been able to accomplish any of it without his family’s love and the “major sacrifices” they made on his behalf.
They’re the main reason White says he finished high school. Although he was already earning earning $5 million a year when he was in his late teens, White kept his promise to get his diploma. He did too because he realizes (with some reluctance and modesty) that he is a role model for kids. “I never wanted to have to tell some kid that I just quit. That’s not cool, no matter what,” says White, adding that he was stoked to finally get his diploma from Carlsbad High School after studying in school and on the road with tutors for so many years.
But White is clear that even a diploma, all the gold medals, fame and money that he’s earned are still nothing compared to time spent up in the clouds. "There's just this amazing moment where you're not going up anymore, but you're not coming down. It's just like this floating,” he muses. “Yeah, it's just the best feeling.”
Shaun White at U.S. Snowboarding Grand Prix.