Shaun White tells story of two snowboards that changed his life: 'I love this sport so much'
ZHANGJIAKOU, China — The end caused Shaun White to reflect back on the beginning, and the story he told while choking back tears after his final halfpipe competition says as much about him as it does about snowboarding.
White recalled getting his first snowboard, running home from school for days to ask his mother whether it had arrived.
“And it wasn’t there. And then the next day, same thing. For like four days, I did that,” White said. “And then one day, she just burst into the classroom with a board in her hand, and I was like beside myself. She interrupted everyone just to give me my board, and from then on, it was just, I was on a mission.”
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That mission wasn’t to revolutionize what was then a niche sport of ski resort outcasts. But in his competitiveness, in his excellence with a board on his feet, White changed that.
It would be years after White got that first snowboard that a halfpipe competition was added in 1998. Even then, it was White’s Olympic success – back-to-back medals in 2006 and 2010 – that helped elevate the sport in mainstream culture. He finished his career with three Olympic gold medals in five Games.
“I had something to prove, and my sport was pretty misunderstood. Nobody in the community really snowboarded,” White recalled. “Everybody kind of thought I wasn’t really going to amount to much in my lifetime and my career.
“To feel this need to prove something, to do it over and over and over, I was so proud of that every step of the way. I love this sport so much. Even the awful moments of sitting in a hospital room thinking, what’s next? Or coming so close to winning and feeling the agony of defeat and who I had to become to come back and to win again. Three out of five, it’s not bad.”
Through tears, White thought of the man who gave him another board. Jake Burton Carpenter, founder of Burton snowboards, first sponsored White when he was 7.
Their partnership spanned most of White’s career and friendship lasted until Carpenter’s death in November 2019 from cancer.
“I wish Jake was here,” White said through tears. “I think he would have gave me a big hug and said how proud he was and, ‘Enough’s enough. It’s time to pick up the powder board, bud. It’s time to turn that page and open the door on what’s next and you’ve done enough.’”
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Shaun White tells the story of two snowboards that changed life
