ZHANGJIAKOU, China – It wouldn’t be easy. Of course, it wouldn’t be easy. Not this season, not these Olympics, Shaun White ’s last.
The legendary …
ZHANGJIAKOU, China – It wouldn’t be easy. Of course, it wouldn’t be easy. Not this season, not these Olympics, Shaun White ’s last. The legendary snowboarder, the one who redefined the sport by making the sky-scraping tricks look effortless, faced one last run to decide his fate. Either his competitive snowboarding career would end earlier than planned, or he’d have one more chance at the last hurrah he’d imagined in the Olympic final. As he rode laps on the chair and the T-bar between dozens of other qualifying runs at the Beijing Olympics, White thought about the what ifs. What if he slipped? What if his board caught a chunk of snow in the halfpipe? What if this was it? It wouldn’t be, to White’s great relief. After falling on his first run in qualifying on a trick he created, White nailed his second run at Genting Snow Park on Wednesday to finish fourth and secure a spot in Friday’s final. It was, in one competition, an encapsulation of a season that has seen White face setbacks in trying to make his fifth Olympics team even as he’s shown flashes of brilliance that serve as a reminder of the 35-year-old’s dominance in the sport. “It would have been nice to just cruise in and have a great, easy first run. But I had to fight for it,” White said. “I had to work for it. That’s been this entire season, me just grinding it out, working for it.” White will be joined in the final by American teammates Taylor Gold and Chase Josey, who finished seventh and 12th, respectively.
