Vail Resorts landed the biggest fish this week, announcing a partnership with Olympic superstar Shaun White.
The multiyear deal has the most celebrated athlete in snowboarding and skateboarding representing all six Vail hills, with the company’s newest addition, Northstar at Lake Tahoe in California, serving as White’s home mountain.
Part of the deal includes Vail Resorts donating $5 to White’s chosen charity, Tennessee’s St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, for every Epic Pass it sells. The company sold almost 300,000 season passes last season.
White will design a 22-foot halfpipe at Northstar. Vail acquired Northstar in October and plans $30 million in capital improvements at the lakeside ski area, part of nearly $123 million in new chairlifts, lodges and improvements across its stable of six ski areas in Colorado and California.
“I think as a company we have the resources — as we have shown in a lot of different areas — to put together some pretty innovative ideas. And Shaun is probably the biggest fountain of creativity in the industry,” said Vail Resorts chief Rob Katz.
The 24-year-old White has grown up in the spotlight, becoming the most recognized snow- sports athlete in the country, if not the world. He has won 20 X Games medals and two Olympic golds, establishing the fire-maned ‘boarder as one of his generation’s most iconic athletes.
While White spent most of his youth traveling to local hills in Southern California, he said, “It was a real treat when my parents planned a big trip and we got to go to Northstar.”
“They have an amazing park there that can cater not only to someone like myself with advanced needs but also people who are just starting out,” White said.
With White’s universal fame, the athlete who enlisted his first snowboarding sponsor at age 7 has developed a rigorous and highly selective process for choosing partners.
“Yeah, we found that out,” said Katz, whose Vail Resorts now joins Target, Burton, Oakley and Hewlett-Packard as White’s top sponsors. The Vail Resorts partnership replaces White’s longtime deal with Park City Mountain Resort.
“They came to me, but it’s definitely something mutual where I had wanted to work with them too,” White said.
White, who was born with a heart defect that required two open-heart surgeries before he turned 1, has been a longtime supporter of St. Jude Hospital.
Jason Blevins: 303-954-1374 or jblevins@denverpost.com
