The Prodigy: Shaun White
Spring '04; Volume 1, Issue No. 002
By Eric Blehm
How about your own riding?
I had a really great year last year, and so many good things have come out of it. I'm so excited about going into next year. The feeling I have right now for snowboarding is I feel like I just started. I reached a platform where I can grow so much more, you know?
It's like a rebirth?
Yeah, I'm so amped for the year. I've got new tricks planned out, new runs. I want to win the pipe and slopestyle at the X Games. I just want to take it as far as I can, go as big as I can, and enjoy it as much as possible. [Note: two months after this interview, White won the Winter X Games slopestyle. He was the favorite to win the pipe, but a sprained knee kept him out of the finals.]
How much bigger can you go?
Oh, I think I can go way bigger. From like 13 to 15, I grew a bit and I felt a lot stronger in the halfpipe. It helped me step up my airs a lot higher. I was able to get out before, but I'm just finding now, even in skateboarding, that I can ollie higher. It's really weird. My strength has definitely helped. Not that I'm going to go and light weights or anything. I used to do stretching, but I'm pretty lazy about it.
At 17, you're one of the most successful snowboards of all time. People are claiming you could be the first person to score gold in snowboarding and skateboarding at the X Games. Does that pressure get to you?
There was a lot of hype around the Summer X Games because of the whole snow/skate thing. It didn't phase me too much. I'm just so used to competing and hearing things form people. I think it drives me more than anything. It's a compliment, not pressure.
You seem really relaxed as a competitor, but inside you're pretty fierce about competition, right?
I'm competitive with myself and with others-- but I don't like to let it show. There have been times when I've had a trick that I couldn't land and it drives me crazy. Sometimes, in the heat of competition, I'll stick a trick for the first time because I have this thing ingrained in my head that you have to stomp everything at contests. I love the feeling of going for it right there and then.
So the pressure doesn't get to you. How old were you for your first competition?
It was the USASA. I did GS, slalom, halfpipe and slopestyle. It was mostly in Big Bear. I was around seven years old and went to nationals. There were quite a few little kids at the nationals, but at the local events probably only a dozen riders, like ages seven to 12. I got 11th place in the field of riders that were 12.
What is your brother Jesse's role in your life?
Jesse rocks! Man, we're best friends. It's awesome. He's 24, and right now he's working for Burton as sub team manager who handles me and a few other kids. It's awesome because it allows him to travel with me. So I get to travel and see the world with my older brother and do whatever we want. Mess around in Japan. It's always nice to have somebody there who has your back, and he's an amazing artist and designer. I have a boot coming out with Burton that Jesse made happen just from a few notes on a piece of paper. He was able to guide Burton to create exactly what I wanted. I could never do that. I don't have the attention span for that. And he's honest: straight up, brutal. I'll be sliding a rail with some new style and I'll ask him, " Does that look could?" He'll answer, "No! Get out of here. What are you doing?" He's a sick snowboarder, too, so when we're on the mountain, I'll watch him and teal his tricks, but I can do that because he's my brother.
Does he help you do your homework?
I wish. I'm trying to finish high school, and it's so hard. Photo shoots, travel, contests, and trying to keep a good grade point average is really tough.
What's your school like now that you moved from Del Mar?
Torrey Pines was my old school, but they wouldn't help me out with my situation. I don't know why. Maybe if I was an ice skater or ice dancer or tennis player, but since I snowboard and skateboard, they didn't really get it. I mean, Tony Hawk went there, you'd think they'd get it. So now I go to an off-branch of Carlsbad High, independent study. I have a teacher and go into actual class every day when I'm home. I make up a lot during summer. It's a vicious circle, but my teacher, Katie, rules. She gets it. I get credit for certain thing, like P.E., because my life is so physical. And there are some crossover angles. Like when I'm working on graphics and figuring out sketches for board graphics and things like that on the road, I can use that for part of my art credits. She tries to coordinate my life with my education as much as possible.
What are your favorite subjects? What's easy? What's hard?
I like math. I'm in geometry right now. I like the feeling. You see that huge problem, and the, you know, you use this formula that you have, and you start moving numbers around to crack the puzzle. It makes you feel good. I love that, and I really like history. It's cool because it's just pillaging and plundering. It's so bad what people have done to each other throughout history. I just covered Napoleon and Hitler and all these gnarly guys who took over Europe. It's interesting to see how the world came to where we are now. And here, how the Constitution was set up and how something written that long ago was so carefully written that it still works. And to think of what was important in the world in the past and now, here we are in America surfing in the ocean and sliding down hills on handrails. Wow, it's like, I should be storming the banks of Normandy but I'm out snowboarding. I feel so blessed to be doing what I'm doing now, instead of growing up in the 1700s when getting beheaded in the French Revolution was a serious possibility. Are you kidding me? A snowboarder, in the French Revolution? I would have gotten my head lopped off for sure. Now I'm risking the occasional bruised tailbone.
Let's talk about air.
That, I can do.
Try and explain to the world that feeling when...
...you're stuck upside-down. Sorry, I interrupted.
No, you go.
That point where you're stuck there upside-down, and you get that kind of flying feeling, and then you swoop back in for more. I don't know. I love that feeling of hitting jumps and being able to do the trick and come down in the perfect spot where you don't even feel the impact of the landing. It's that sweet "woosh," and it's just butter.