Extreme sports star White at peace with frenetic life
He is at the most peace those last five seconds, in that instant before dropping into the next ramp, in that whisper of time in which he again challenges the limits of gravity. This is when Shaun White feels most comfortable. When he can just ride.
He can’t do it as he once did. He can’t roll into a local skate park at home in San Diego as some detached rail-thin shape of a kid with a mane of red hair and his only care being the next trick his mind will create and body will execute.
He hasn’t been that kid for a long time. White is 24 and worth millions now.
It has been a lucrative ride.
“I wake up and I’m me every day, which is great and strange at the same time,” he said. “I wouldn’t say it’s a bummer, but it’s definitely hard to go out and do the simple things. Go to the grocery store or a movie. Grab a bite to eat. And just going down to the skate park doesn’t really work anymore. I can go there to have fun but not practice. That kind of (attention) is humbling.
“I want to show what is possible, what can be done. I wasn’t supposed to be doing any of this. All sorts of people told me I wouldn’t amount to anything. From the very start, they said I was crazy. To now be in a position to speak for others is very tough and yet, again, very humbling.”
Most trace the mainstream introduction of extreme sports to the 1970s, when rock climbing and marathon running continued to gain participants and interest. It’s at a much different level now. It’s a much different world.
White is the face of that popular universe, a snowboarding/skateboarding legend here this weekend to compete in the Dew Tour event at the Hard Rock Hotel, where they have constructed a ramp on top of the pool so that White and others can defy logic among the bikinis and booze.
This is the tricky part: It looks so effortless at times, so rhythmic is how these athletes perform literally suspended in air, you forget the danger that comes with extreme sports. Then something bad happens.
T.J. Lavin was in critical condition at University Medical Center on Friday, the Durango High graduate having been placed in a medically induced coma following a crash Thursday while performing a jump in preliminaries for the BMX dirt competition.
“It’s tough,” White said. “It’s the sport we are in. Hopefully, he will pull through. (Getting hurt) has to be the last thing on your mind, because any seed of doubt like that can really mess you over and be the reason you do get hurt.
“I think there is a big part of (extreme sports) people don’t understand that riders and skaters and everyone who competes do. When you go snowboarding, you don’t have to do what I do to have a good time. It’s up to you how far you want to take it.
“I’ve been skating and snowboarding since I was 6. We are a product of pushing the limits and our abilities in these sports, and yet there is risk in that. But it’s probably more dangerous to be in a car, and we get in one every day.”
Pushing his limits has earned White millions of dollars annually, to the point where in 2009 Forbes Magazine rated Peyton Manning as the only football or baseball player in America who makes more in annual endorsements than White.
There are houses and clothing lines and fancy sports cars. There are gold medals from the 2006 and 2010 Winter Olympics. He is a global star who on Dec. 4 will host a snowboarding competition in China, where you can fly down a half-pipe while staring at the Great Wall.
The kid at the skate park might be gone now, long ago replaced with an extreme sports star handling corporate obligations with the ease of another aerial assault.
But he remains at peace in the simplest of things.
When he can just ride.
“We’re not the clean-cut athletes seen on television,” White said. “I think that’s exciting and impactful. We have different personalities and characteristics. We come in different shapes and sizes from all over the world. I’m not built like a football player, but I find a way to get really high on a half-pipe.
“I definitely feel more like a performer than an athlete.”
Las Vegas Review-Journal sports columnist Ed Graney can be reached at egraney@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-4618. He can be heard from 2 to 4 p.m. Monday and 2 to 3 p.m. Thursday on “Monsters of the Midday,” FOX Sports Radio 920 AM.
