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COPPER MOUNTAIN, Colo., Dec 13 (AP) \u2014 One of Shaun White\u2019s greatest fears is finding himself upside-down above a halfpipe with no idea where he\u2019s going to land.<\/p>\n
Time and again over two decades, he has decided the risk is worth it.<\/p>\n
As he embarked this month on the quest to make his fifth Olympics, the world\u2019s most famous halfpipe rider says living a life full of calculated risks is still part of his DNA \u2014 a mindset that, these days, is less taken for granted in all-or-nothing sports such as his than it was a mere 12 months ago.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve been lost in the air before, and it\u2019s terrifying,\u201d White said in an interview with The Associated Press. \u201cYou\u2019re flying around and you don\u2019t know where you are and you\u2019re hoping for the best. The sky color matches the color of the snow. We never really had a name for that. I was intrigued when I heard they call it the \u2018twisties\u2019 in gymnastics.\u201d<\/p>\n
Simone Biles\u2019 decision to pull out of the women\u2019s team final at the Tokyo Games earlier this year resonated with athletes throughout the world, including White, and advanced the conversation about many of the mental health challenges Olympians face.<\/p>\n
Just as twisting and somersaulting over a vault can be a life-threatening endeavor, doing the same over an icy, rock-hard halfpipe is among the most dangerous of Olympic pursuits. White was famously helicoptered off the halfpipe in New Zealand after a grisly wreck in the run-up to the 2018 Olympics. When he overcame the 62-stitch injury to his face and won the gold medal in Pyeongchang, it marked a stunning crescendo to a comeback that even he wasn\u2019t sure was possible.<\/p>\n
White believes the key to an athlete putting him or herself at risk over and over again is knowing you\u2019re doing it for the right reasons \u2014 a key component missing from Biles\u2019 mindset when she stepped away.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s scary to be out there alone,\u201d White said. \u201cAnd when you go out and do that, you want it to be your choice. You don\u2019t want to feel like you have to do this because of some reason other than, \u2018Hey, I want to do this.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
The stakes will be every bit as high, if not higher, this year. A triple cork jump \u2014 involving 1620 degrees of spin above the halfpipe \u2014 could very well be the trick needed to win the Olympics. It involves another half-revolution of spin than the back-to-back 1440s that White used to win in South Korea. White used to practice the triple cork into an air bag, but nobody has yet pulled it off in a high-stakes contest.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, at the season\u2019s first Olympic qualifying event this week, everyone saw the risks involved. In Saturday\u2019s final of the U.S. Grand Prix, Japanese rider Raibu Katayama had to be taken by sled off the course after hitting his head and neck on the lip of the halfpipe. Earlier in the week, freeskier Connor Ladd was taken to a hospital in Denver after suffering a traumatic head injury. His family said Ladd has made progress but has a long journey ahead.<\/p>\n
Another freeskier, Gus Kenworthy, pulled out of the contest. He said it\u2019s not uncommon for action-sport athletes to get lost in the air.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t have a sense of where the sky and the ground and everything was, and that\u2019s why I pulled out,\u201d said Kenworthy, who won the silver medal in slopestyle in 2014.<\/p>\n
White withdrew from snowboarding\u2019s Olympic slopestyle contest in 2014 \u2014 part of a Russian adventure that turned out nothing like he\u2019d hoped.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was hard and it was harsh,\u201d White said. \u201cI got a bunch of backlash from other competitors saying I chickened out. But I had to be confident with myself and say, \u2018You know, look, this is the comfort level, and it\u2019s not there.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
White also finished fourth in the halfpipe that year. The setbacks forced him to step back and rethink what made him love snowboarding, and all the risk that comes with it, in the first place.<\/p>\n
Part of the mission between 2014-18 was to get back to the top, and do it without so much noise from the outside \u2014 sponsors, business projects and the like.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s like that again this time around but with an even tighter-knit feel.<\/p>\n
He\u2019s working with his brother, Jesse, again, and is in a relationship with actress Nina Dobrev, whom he met at a motivational seminar. Now 35 and with the end of his career much closer than the beginning, White says he\u2019s entering this Olympic journey with a refined perspective on what\u2019s really important.<\/p>\n
In his teens and 20s, he battled against cynics who wondered why he was devoting his life \u2014 putting his life on the line, in fact \u2014 for a sport that was not accepted in the mainstream. He coupled that with a desire to show that not only was he in a legit sport, but that he was the best at it, and that, yes, you could become rich and famous doing it.<\/p>\n
\u201cAfter a while, drawing from that same fuel of motivation isn\u2019t sustainable,\u201d he said. \u201cSo then, you go, \u2018OK, cool, what else is there?\u2019 And then I look and see things that are important to me: Being a good friend. Being someone who others can count on. I had to take this hard look at what I was doing, and now, this understanding of who I am in the greater picture has really helped me with everything. With feeling content.\u201d<\/p>\n
Don\u2019t get him wrong. He\u2019d still like to win on Feb. 11, the day the gold medal is awarded on the mountains outside of Beijing.<\/p>\n
If he does, it will add to an already legendary trophy case. If he doesn\u2019t \u2014 well, it won\u2019t be the first time he\u2019s come up short.<\/p>\n
Perhaps the biggest triumph, he says, has already been secured. He\u2019s still doing this at age 35, and he\u2019s ready to give everything in a quest for a fifth Olympics because he\u2019s doing it for the right reasons.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m feeling motivated and I\u2019m feeling like I can,\u201d White said. \u201cIt\u2019s a different feeling but the drive and the motivation is there.\u201d<\/p>\n
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COPPER MOUNTAIN, Colo., Dec 13 (AP) \u2014 One of Shaun White\u2019s greatest fears is finding himself upside-down above a halfpipe with no idea where he\u2019s going to land. Time and again over two decades, he has decided the risk is worth it. As he embarked this month on the quest to make his fifth Olympics, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-179246","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179246","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=179246"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/179246\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=179246"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=179246"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/arunachaltimes.in\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=179246"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}