Beijing Olympics Will Be Shaun White’s Final Competition Of His Career

He’s a five-time Olympian, something only three other Americans on the Beijing 2022 Olympic team can claim. Shaun White had already indicated that these Games would be his last. On Saturday, he confirmed they’ll also be his final competition.

White has been hinting toward retirement throughout the season. He told NBC’s Craig Melvin in December that the Beijing Games would be his last, and later that week at Dew Tour Copper Mountain, he announced his retirement from that event, which saw him win numerous victories over his eight appearances and which he leaves as the also the only athlete to have won Dew Cups in both the summer and the winter series.

White didn’t compete at this year’s X Games Aspen, but he leaves that event as the all-time leader in gold medals, with 15 (13 from snowboard disciplines, two in skateboard vert) since his debut in 2000.

Now, White has confirmed his competitive career his over. Speaking to media at a press conference in Beijing on Saturday, White said his fifth Games “has all had its amazing glow as I’ve decided this will be my last Olympics.” But, he added, “I usually take the season off to get excited again, but this will be my last competition.”

“I’ve given it my all, there have been some ups and downs on the way to get here. And with that I feel I’ve got stronger and better,” White continued. “I’m just so excited about everything. Opening ceremony was incredible. The venue looks incredible. I’m just enjoying every single moment.”

Like Tom Brady, who also announced his retirement this year, White leaves as the undisputed all-time great in his sport—which he got started in at the tender age of 13, after having earned a Burton sponsorship at the age of seven.

In 2006, he became the first snowboarder to land back-to-back 1080s in competition. His three Olympic gold medals are the most by a snowboarder. In his 22-year career, he has made podiums in multiple snowboarding disciplines—slopestyle and halfpipe—as well as in multiple sports, with skateboarding, which is virtually unheard of for action sports athletes.

White has grown up with the world watching—and hasn’t always made the right choices. In media coverage of the 2018 Games, White was asked about the sexual harrassment allegations made against him by the former drummer of his band, Bad Things, in 2016. The two sides had reached an undisclosed settlement. After winning gold in Pyeongchang, White was asked at a press conference if he thought the allegations would “tarnish his legacy.” He said he wanted to keep the conversation on the Olympics, not “gossip,” a word he later apologized for using on the TODAY Show.

In recent years, White has placed almost as much focus on his career off the halfpipe as on it. He joined jerky brand KRAVE as an investor in 2021 and, in January, announced the launch of his own brand, Whitespace, an active lifestyle brand that has already released a signature pro model snowboard and will produce both apparel and hardgoods.

He’s also spoken openly about his desire to move on to the next phase of his life with girlfriend Nina Dobrev, as well as his dream of becoming a father.

It’s so far been a moderate transition to life after snowboarding; even in spring 2021, White wasn’t ready to contemplate it. “I’m definitely taking it one day at a time and one event at a time and seeing how it all plays out,” he told me at the time. “Every athlete knows there will be a day where you either can’t or choose not to compete anymore.”

This season, however, that day began to loom.

The signs started to add up for White throughout this Olympic qualification season, which threw him multiple curveballs. It started at training camp in Switzerland this fall, when three Japanese riders—Ayumu Hirano, Ruka Hirano and Yuto Totsuka—successfully landed the triple cork (three off-axis flips), progressing the sport even further.

White had a “loose plan” of the run he’d put together in this season leading up to the Beijing Games, “and then things went down and it’s like, ‘Okay, cool, the bar has been raised,’” he told me in November. “It’s not like I’m packing my bags. Let’s just adjust, we’ve got new information now; let’s go back, formulate a new plan, and see how that goes.”

More obstacles were on the way. White struggled with an ankle injury during the all-important December qualification events, failing to land on the podium at the U.S. Grand Prix or Dew Tour, both held at Copper Mountain. Then he contracted COVID-19 over the holidays and pulled out of the U.S. Grand Prix at Mammoth in January, the final U.S. qualifier for the Games.

It meant an unexpected trip to the Laax Open in Switzerland later that month to secure his spot on the men’s Olympic snowboard halfpipe team, which he did with a third-place finish. It was his first podium of the season, with his previous best having been his fourth-place finish at the world championships in Aspen in March.

It was at that event White really began to realize how much the field around him had changed. “I heard over the loudspeaker ‘the oldest competitor in the field’ and I’m looking around, thinking, ‘Who are they talking about?’” White told me in October. “I wear it now as somewhat of a badge of honor in a sense, to be on top of a sport that’s everchanging for this amount of time has been a challenge. It’s been my life’s work.”

At these Games, at 35, White becomes the oldest U.S. Olympic halfpipe rider ever—as well as the oldest male halfpipe rider from any nation.

We’re not likely to see a triple cork from White at the Beijing Games. If Ayumu Hirano, Ruka Hirano and Totsuka can all land it, the Japanese could very well sweep the podium.

But that’s easier said than done; Ayumu has landed the trick at Dew Tour and X Games but didn’t win either contest because he could not link it into his next trick.

Australia’s Scotty James, fresh off a gold medal at X Games Aspen in January, is also capable of landing the triple, but his X Games run showed that it may not be necessary. That’s what White will hope as well.

“I have some runs in my head that I’d like to do,” White said. “And it’s all about visualizing and making that happen the ‘day of.’”

Riders are judged on difficulty, amplitude, variety and execution in their tricks, and White’s scores in amplitude and execution especially have always been near-flawless. He gets more air out of the halfpipe than anyone—even now—and his landings are technically precise.

At the Pyeongchang 2018 Olympics, White won gold by putting back-to-back double 1440s in his run—something he had not attempted until that run. His signature “Tomahawk”—a Double McTwist 1260, named after his former ritual of eating a large steak before competition—remains in his runs today and is a judge-pleaser.

White isn’t a favorite to defend his gold in Beijing—or to podium—but his best run, executed perfectly, is medal-worthy, especially if his competitors struggle to land clean runs.

“I’m sort of pinching myself, with how lucky I am to still be here at this age,” White said in Saturday’s press conference. That he made a career out of snowboarding at all still amazes him.

“I don’t know how many kids out there aspire to be a cowboy and then really get to be a cowboy.”