Last Wednesday's snowboard halfpipe final made one thing very clear: Shaun White is the greatest snowboarder of the sport's short history.
White's gold medal winning runs proved the young star has done more for the sport than any other boarder in history. He is to snowboarding what Michael Jordan was to basketball, what Wayne Gretzky was to hockey or, for a better comparison, what Tony Hawk is to skateboarding. The sport has always had a fan base, but it was White that truly brought snowboarding to the mainstream.
Let's look at the facts. After Wednesday night's memorable runs, White has now taken home halfpipe gold in two straight Winter Olympics. White's winning run gave him a score of 48.4, broke his own record for highest halfpipe score in a Winter Olympics and put him nearly two and a half points ahead of silver medalist Peetu Piiroinen of Finland.
White has taken home gold in eight Winter X Games, including winning the superpipe competition the past three years. He won six Dew Tour gold medals in 2008 and 2009 and won the 2009 Snowboarding Grand Prix superpipe event.
But just being a champion isn't enough to be the greatest. White isn't just a champion though, he's a trailblazer as well. White is the first snowboarder to land back-to-back double corks (two off-axis rotations, or diagonal flips), which he did at the Red Bull Superpipe earlier this year.
Now, the double cork is a considered a must have trick to make the Olympics (all four members of the U.S. men's snowboarding team can nail it). So, White did what any great athlete does, he made a new trick, the Double McTwist 1260: two board-over-head flips within three and a half turns. And that superpipe three-peat mentioned earlier made him the first person in Winter X Games history to three-peat the superpipe event.
While White isn't into snowboarding for the money, he has turned snowboarding into a business. In 2009, Forbes magazine estimated White made $9 million from endorsements alone in 2008. But White isn't only cashing checks from sponsors. His videogame Shaun White Snowboarding had sold over three million copies as of May 2009.
In other words, White isn't just a snowboarder; Shaun White is snowboarding.
Which brings us to Tuesday evening's final practice run. Less than 24 hours before he was scheduled to take his first run in the medal round, White wasn't polishing his tricks, or finalizing his run at the practice session. White wasn't even near the slopes. Instead, White, who's been plagued by falls all season long, did something to keep himself out of his head. He went kayaking.
"He felt like he'd nailed his run the night before, and he doesn't like to ride four days in a row," said Bud Keene, U.S. snowboarding coach. "It gave his legs the day off. We sat in kayaks, watched the sunset and had a great night. It was a completely un-halfpipe thing to do, and it was the perfect call."
Clearly the waters of Vancouver's Horseshoe Bay were just what White needed to prove to the world he is the best.
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