Shaun White

Shaun White (born September 3, 1986, San Diego, California, U.S.) is an American snowboarder who won Olympic gold medals in the half-pipe event in 2006, 2010, and 2018.

(Read Gold-medalist Torah Bright’s Britannica’s entry on snowboarding.)

White survived a heart defect that required two operations when he was an infant. Despite his early health problems, he was soon skateboarding, surfing, skiing, and playing association football (soccer). He took up snowboarding at age six and the following year won his first competition. He became a phenomenon on the amateur circuit, claiming five national titles, and turned professional at age 13. He made his Winter X Games debut in 2000 and won five slopestyle titles (2003–06, 2009), as well as superpipe titles in 2003, 2006, and 2008–13. At age 15 White fell 0.3 point short of qualifying for the U.S. team for the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, Utah. Undeterred, he dominated the professional circuit for the next two years, and when qualifying began for the Turin 2006 Winter Olympics, he won the half-pipe in all five of the Grand Prix events that determined team selection.

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At Turin, White’s thick mop of red hair—which had earned him the nickname “the Flying Tomato”—and his gregarious personality made him a media darling, but he was in danger of missing the finals in the half-pipe event after a fall during his first qualifying run. His second run was flawless, however, and it earned him the highest qualifying score of the competition. On his first run of the finals, White performed two 1,080° (three full spins) airs on the front side of the pipe and a backside 900. He clinched the gold medal with a 46.8 score on this run, but he showed off his best trick, a spellbinding 1,080° backside air, on the final run of the day. White defended his half-pipe title at the 2010 Winter Olympic Games in Vancouver, easily taking the gold medal with a final run that featured his latest signature move: a double McTwist 1260 (two flips while completing three-and-a-half twists). He underperformed at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, where he withdrew from the new slopestyle event (citing poor course conditions) and finished in fourth place in the half-pipe. During a training session in 2017 White crashed and required more than 60 stitches in his face. However, he recovered in time for the 2018 Winter Olympic Games in P’yŏngch’ang, South Korea, and there he won his third gold medal in the half-pipe. At the 2022 Games in Beijing, White fell during his final run in the half-pipe and finished fourth. He subsequently announced his retirement.

White’s success was not limited to snowboarding. Having entered the professional skateboard circuit in 2003, he was the first athlete to compete in both the Winter and the original (summer) X Games, where he managed to win gold medals in the vertical, or vert, skateboarding event in 2007 and 2011. Meanwhile, his athletic prowess and relaxed charm led to widespread media exposure and lucrative endorsement deals. He released a snowboarding DVD, The White Album, in 2004 and was a central figure in a 2005 documentary on snowboarders, First Descent.