The Flying Tomato: Olympic Gold Medalist And Snowboarding Superstar
The twenty three year old snowboarder was born Shaun Roger White on September 3, 1986 in San Diego, California. He was born with a Tetralogy of Fallot, a congenital heart defect. Before reaching one he had two open heart surgeries, but that did not stop him from living a beyond normal childhood. He was raised in a family of five. He describes his best childhood memory as going skiing with his family. At age four while skiing with his family he was able to ski right alongside his older brother. At age six his mother tired to slow him down by putting him on a snowboard, but it only made him go faster. His parents did not stop him from snowboarding by taking him to the mountains as often as possible. At age seven he was entered into his first amateur snowboarding competition, which he won and got the wild card position in Nationals. He went to Nationals and made just outside of the top ten. His mother sent in a homemade video of Shaun snowboarding to Burton and they soon offered the seven year old a sponsorship.
It wasn’t until he turned thirteen that Shaun White made pro. He made five national titles and then won big time at the Arctic Challenge. Time went by fast for him as a teen. He won a metal at the X-Games at sixteen and was dubbed snowboarding prodigy at seventeen. He was not only turning heads on the slopes but on the pavement as well. When he was nine he had befriended Tony Hawk. Hawk helped him make skateboarding pro at seventeen.
In 2003 he was the only athlete that had participated in both the Summer and Winter X-Games in two different sports. In 2006 he qualified for Winter Olympics in Torino. Earlier in 2002 he failed to make the US team by three tenths of a point. But, he was in for blood when he tried for Torino and made the team by a landslide. In 2006 he won gold for the Men’s half pipe.
At twenty three he is still going strong and just won his second gold ever in the Men’s Half Pipe at Vancouver. He has no intentions of stopping now. Men’s Half Pipe Olympic gold 2014 here he comes.
