ASPEN — He’s the inventor of the most difficult snowboard trick ever done in a halfpipe. He’s the only two-time Olympic gold medalist in the discipline. And he holds the records for the most medals (19) and most gold medals (11) in both X Games and Winter X Games history (10 gold and 15 total at Winter X).
Yet, Shaun White still doesn’t know how to drive a stick-shift.
“I just never had to. I’ve always had rental cars with automatic or someone else driving,” White said on the eve of Winter X 15 at Buttermilk Mountain. “When it comes to driving a stick, I’m just not that savvy.”
Fortunately, the 24-year-old snowboarding star has had plenty of time to work on his road skills after signing an endorsement deal with BF Goodrich and taking the competitive snowboarding season off. The reigning Olympic and X Games superpipe champion enters his first contest of the season when superpipe qualifying starts tonight at 7 p.m.
“Gearing up for this season has been a little different than normal,” White said. “It’s not as contest-driven of a season for me. With that, I’ve actually had time to practice. I was out in Park City doing some riding during Sundance time, gearing up for everything.”
White wowed the world a year ago at Winter X when he won his third straight men’s superpipe gold medal with the introduction of the double McTwist 1260, an even more demanding derivative of the eye-popping double-corked (two flips and two twists) tricks that took the sport of snowboarding to new heights last winter.
The move, considered the most difficult ever done in a halfpipe due to its hyper-technicality and blindsided commitment, earned him the Olympic gold a month later, and a seemingly permanent pass beyond the velvet rope worldwide ever since.
Contests have not been on the top of his priority list, unless you count his own signature event, the “Shaun White Oakley Air & Style” contest he hosted in China in December. But he did not compete there either.
“For me, I find the excitement all over the place,” he said. “It was amazing to be more than just a competitor. But it was cool. It was definitely a different role for me, and it felt different. I was doing interviews and promoting the sport, and it was very exciting and fulfilling.”
Fulfilling as it may have been, anyone who has followed the career of the world’s most dominant snowboarding competitor knows full well that Shaun White didn’t come to Aspen just to do interviews and promote the sport.
He’s here to win another medal, even if it might not be in the discipline he has become best known for since winning his first Olympic medal in 2006. As it happens, “slopestyle” is historically White’s best event.
“To be honest, it is a bit strange coming back to the slopestyle things. That’s one of my main focuses, to catch up with these guys,” White said of the terrain park-oriented discipline he has won at Winter X five times, but not since 2009. “There’s a lot of new faces, but I’ve been around a bit and I know what I’m doing.
“I think (practice) today was a great example of me seeing what was out there and having to rise to that occasion. I’ve tried to throw a frontside double cork 1080 on jumps in slopestyle. I can do it in the halfpipe, but on jumps it’s totally different. Today was my first time going for it and I landed two, so it was a great day. I learned a new trick. I can’t say that very often.”
Now if he could only master that clutch thing.
