THE NEXT SHAUN WHITE

Every day, a new legion of half-pints take to the halfpipe with the hopes and dreams of their parents riding on their prepubescent shoulders. “My kid’s going to be the next Shaun White,” echoes from lip to lip as “Mommy and Daddy” elbow their way into favor with the media, team managers and ever-present agents. Apparently, child labor laws end where the snow begins, and solicitation isn’t prostitution when it comes to sport. Social debate aside, the real tragedy is no one seems to realize that in order for there to be a “next Shaun White,” the one who’s already here needs to be replaced. And if they couldn’t beat Shaun White the boy how are they gonna have any chance against Shaun White, the man?

A lot of people say that one day you’ll just quit snowboarding and only skate. Everyone is claiming that. I think it would be pretty fun to do that for one year. I get so upset when I come home and I see that my friends have been able to skate all year and they’ve gotten so much better. I do wish I could take all my energy and focus on just one thing, but it is the balance that keeps me doing both. In the winter, I look forward to skating and, in the summer, I look forward to snowboarding. It is a cycle that keeps it fresh.

Lately, you have been traveling in some pretty heavy mainstream circles. I never thought that skating and snowboarding could have done any of this. I did this commercial with A-Rod and Jeff Gordon. It blew my mind. They were just talking to each other about stuff that was probably everyday life for them. A-Rod says, ‘So, Jeff, what are you flying in nowadays?’ like you would ask your friend what kind of car they are driving.

He’s all, ‘Oh, I have the new Falcon XJ9’ or whatever.

A-Rod’s like, ‘Those are pretty good.’ Because of Target, I was able to go to the Indy 500 and sit there with Morgan Freeman and all these crazy celebrities who were just watching the race. And I was the Grand Marshall at a NASCAR event.

How many signature products do you have? It really started out with a pro model board. Every pro goes and gets their first pro model board, which was awesome. Then out of nowhere, Burton was like, ‘What do you think about doing a helmet?’ I thought that’d be good because I had been wearing helmets since I started. Then they wanted to do a boot with me. That was a really big step because nobody in the history of Burton had ever gotten a boot or anything like that; I thought it was a pretty cool honor. That’s when my brother Jesse and I started to get a little bit crazy. We made the boot and it sold super well, so I ended up getting a whole clothing line. I have sunglasses with Oakley now. We are also working on a shoe with Adio.

You don’t have a pro model skateboard? No, I am kind of new to the skate scene still; I’m not too worried about getting one.

How critical are you of the products you use and the stuff that bears your name? I am probably the worst critic when it comes to that stuff. I want it all to be perfect. When something goes out and it’s got my name on it and I see some kid who is gonna be wearing it or riding it, I want to be proud. For the White Album, I was so scared that I was going to put out a bad movie. If I didn’t like the movie after I saw it edited, I would have pulled the plug and have had to pay back the sponsors hundreds of thousands of dollars. I think if my name is on something and I have nothing to do with it, it is another form of selling out.

It seems like you sell a lot of your boards to girls. Or is it just that you leave them at their place when you go back home in the morning? It’s because I have the face of a Greek god. The ladies just love the Shaun! What am I even saying? Actually, a lot of girls are smaller, you know, so it is cool that they can also ride my board. That is why I kept the two sizes, the 151 and the 156. I know a lot of girls who aren’t into riding boards with bunnies on them. I was stoked when Kelly Clark and Natasza [Zurek] rode my board.

What is the craziest idea or sponsorship somebody has come to you with that you’ve said, ‘There is no way in hell I’m doing that’? The hardest part of it is when I get sponsored by companies outside of our industry, like Mountain Dew. My biggest concern is having a say in where they use me in ads and stuff. I think of selling out as saying, ‘Just give me the money and I’ll do whatever you want.’ I don’t want that. I want to be with these companies and try to make ‘em cool.

In all of my contracts, I have a right of refusal or approval over every single thing that comes out. If there is a new ad, Jesse and I will sit at the computer and go, ‘How is the shot? How is the background? Is it a cool ad in the first place?’ If in any way snowboarders are getting stereotyped in a ‘Hey, Bro!’ kind of situation, I don’t really like it. I can’t just let a company take me and do what they want because I’ll end up in a panda suit dancing around on TV or something.

So what have you turned down? Most of the stuff that gets turned down is really bad promo ideas. I can’t say which company, but somebody had the idea to give away ‘Sickbags’ at the X Games. Airsickness bags! They’re like, ‘We’ll put Shaun’s tricks on them, right, and it’ll be like a sick bag of tricks. Don’t you get it?’

I’m like, ‘There is no way you’re going to do that.’

I just pictured some guy going, ‘I’ve got it—sickbag! Kids are gonna love this!’

What is it like having an agent? When you are doing deals with Burton or these other companies, it isn’t too cool if my mom or dad go in there and say, ‘Oh, Shaun’s getting better and he needs a better contract,’ or whatever.

Then the other guys would hit ‘em with just one statement like, ‘Well, Shaun’s your son. That’s why you think he’s so great.’

Getting an agent isn’t to be cool or anything, it is so I don’t even have to think about it when it comes to contracts. I just go, ‘Look, get me the best deal.’ If you start thinking about the money and all that, you get in over your head. I’ve heard I’m a dime a dozen for soooo long.

You have? Until I was 15, and I made a real deal with my sponsors, that was the comment. That’s what made me so determined when I was younger. ‘Oh, he’s a dime a dozen. There are so many kids who do well. He’s not special.’

I think that pushed me a lot. My personality was like, ‘Fine. Be that way.’ I ‘d just go at it even harder and make sure I was better than the kids they were bringing in. It just got weird and pretty competitive.

It must be a big change not having your mom and dad traveling with you now. I get my own hotel rooms now. I am getting more responsibilities on the road. It is rad that Jesse was able to get into a position at Burton where he can be a team manager. Jesse and I don’t even think of it like we are doing our jobs.

Who are you mainly riding with these days? I love riding with Mason Aguirre because he’s just stoked on snowboarding. I try to find whoever is having the most fun and ride with them; that is how you learn. You don’t want to be stuck with some guy who is bummed because he can’t do 1080s or someone who is over it. I like riding with Keir [Dillon]. Eddie Wall is awesome because he is always having so much fun. That is my main crew. Pat Moore. It doesn’t even matter what team you’re on. [Danny] Kass is always a good one but it is hard to find Kass—he is a lurker, you know.

After you hurt your knee in ‘04, which was harder to return to: halfpipe or slopestyle? Probably the pipe, because after I came back from the X Games injury, I went to the Open and did my knee again. I had a gnarly bone bruise. Slopestyle is way easier to get back into because it is jumps and there is something about slopestyle where you can just cruise it so long as you have the right speed.

Did you have any serious injuries before that knee trouble? When I was 11, I crashed into Bob Burnquist while skating at the MTV Sports and Music Festival. That was like a broken arm, foot and skull. I was like, ‘OK, I just have to sit here and relax until I can start skating again.’ When I did my knee, I had to go in and get surgery. I never had to do that before, so I was freaking out. Because of my heart, we had to find the right place to do it—it was a nightmare. After surgery, I looked at my leg and the muscle had shrunk from atrophy. I didn’t even know that could happen. I had to rehab, rebuild my muscles and go to the gym. It was a crazy process that I had never been through before. I thought I was just going to sit on the couch for a long time and do nothing.

Had you ever been to a gym before that? No. It was weird, I was getting my gym on and it got strange. I should still be going right now but I haven’t snapped back into the routine yet. The thing I’ve really realized is that I need to pay more attention to what my body is doing. I won’t hit a jump anymore if it has a bad landing. It isn’t worth it. Why hit something to flat if you can be like, ‘I’m not going to ride this today. You guys need to take the time and make it right. Then we’ll hit it.’

You mentioned your heart. What is the full story on your heart condition? The deal with my heart is that certain valves were leaking blood, or something like that. Basically, they needed to go in and put a wedge in my heart to separate the third and fourth chambers and sew up a lot of holes. It is just something that happened to me in the past and I don’t ever think about it. Every two or three years, I need to do a heart test checkup, which is a little weird. Other than that, I’ve been doing my thing.

A lot of parents would have sheltered a kid with a heart problem like that. What made your parents think that skating and snowboarding would be OK? I still ask them that. There are so many parents who won’t even let their kids stand on a skateboard. I think my parents just realized that I wanted to do this and I had some talent; they just went with it. They used all their money on lift tickets and gas. I think those were the best years of my life so far—we were fully roughing it.

The sport has changed a lot since you started riding. What must the guys at the bank have thought when your parents went in to get money to help their 8-year-old kid pursue snowboarding? That was before snowboarding was even in the Olympics. Not only did they take like 50 grand out on the house, and we’re not a wealthy family, but they had no clue whether it would work out or not. They just knew I wanted to do it. I think about them letting me miss a bunch of school; we would get a rash of sh-t from the teachers. They would say, ‘Shaun, you can’t snowboard forever. You’re not going to be able to make a living at it.’ I wasn’t even missing that much school but they were still freaking.

After I crashed with Bob Burnquist, my mom was at the hospital and another parent came up to her and said, ‘I can’t believe you’re the kind of parent who would let your son do this. Look at what happened. That is what you get.’ Such a gnarly guilt trip! I think when my parents were young, they didn’t have the opportunities that I did. My dad wanted to become a pro surfer but his parents didn’t support it. Because of that, they would back me in whatever. But it wasn’t just me; my sister went to all the soccer camps. When I started focusing on skateboarding, we would show up at swap meets and buy super ghetto cheap decks because we were always breaking them. We just somehow made it work. It wasn’t like a soccer game where you stood there and watched your kid play from the sidelines; my whole family went snowboarding.

I remember being at Mt. Hood when Jim Rippey and Ben Hinkley had built this big jump at the end of the Windell’s pipe. My dad fully launched it. They were just like, ‘Who’s this old guy? He can’t do that.’ The Rog’ was rugged. He did a big ol’ method over it.

Who were some of your heroes back then? The guys I looked up to were Shawn Farmer and Shaun Palmer because they had my name and I was like, ‘They rock!’ I’d see Palmer in videos taking a crap. Was it Roadkill? Whiskey? I’d go up to Snow Summit and Damian Sanders would be there with his black Mohawk doing backflips. I’ll never forget it because he’d hit a jump and a snowmobile would be waiting to take him back up. I was like, ‘Damn, I want to be that good to where I don’t even need to take the chair up!’

When I was young I would see all the craziness, and see the drugs. I was at Jim Rippey’s house when I was 12, and I looked up to Jim because he did all the cool tricks. He was all, ‘Shaun, you want a beer?’

All I could say was, ‘No thanks, I’m good, Jim.’

So your parents didn’t shelter you too much? My family is a weird group because we are so open. When I was younger, I knew about drugs, sex, all that stuff. For some reason, knowing about it didn’t make it that big of a deal. When I saw my favorite riders getting high or something like that, I was just like, ‘Whatever, that’s their deal.’

Did you look up to anyone else besides the Snowboarders In Exile crew? In skating, there was Bob Burnquist, Bucky Lasek and Tony Hawk. Specifically, Tony. I mention him a lot because it was such a big deal for me to be able to hang out with him, and I take a lot of advice from him. But out of everybody, my brother Jesse has been the biggest influence. He is the one who got me started in skating and snowboarding in the first place. I’d ask Jesse what would be a cool trick to do and he’d say, ‘Oh, a 360. Just go like this and try it.’ When it came to being on the hill with him, he was this vault of tricks and information. Still to this day, he is the biggest influence in my life.

When was the first time you went overseas? I went to Japan when I was 12. I made a deal with myself before I went that I would just try anything. So when they brought out the crazy fish-head plate, I just went at it. I was like, ‘Whatever, Dude, I’ll eat it, I don’t care.’ I loved it.

That was my first experience with traveling. I thought, ‘Are you kidding me? They want to send me to Japan? Sweet!’ Out of all the places in the world, I never would have figured.

Do you think other people put more pressure on you than you put on yourself? I put tons of pressure on myself for some reason. It’s like I’m not even competing against everybody else, I’m competing against myself. This year, I think I just extended myself too far. I did five movie parts. There was just so much on my plate and I asked for it; I wanted it. I sat there at the beginning of the year and I picked out my calendar. I was like, ‘I want to do all these contests, I want these video parts,’ and I just bit off a little more than I could chew.

You were filming for five videos this year? Volcom and Oakley are doing videos and Mountain Dew is sponsoring a really large documentary called First Descent. I filmed for it in Alaska. It’s kind of like Dogtown and Z-Boys for snowboarding. It takes you through the past. I was in Alaska with Shawn Farmer and Terje and those guys. Then I shot with Mack Dawg and also for David Benedek’s project, 91 Words For Snow.

That was your first trip to Alaska, wasn’t it? Yeah. This is going to sound really bad but I hated it. Alaska really wasn’t what I was looking for. It was really intense out there—you could go as big as you wanted to; and, on the other hand, it was like, ‘Do I want to do that?’ Everything seems to be about dying there. ‘Oh, Man, you go over the falls there and you’re dead. Don’t set off that, or you’re dead. You’re gonna die here. Oh, that’s death for sure.’

Even getting ready to go up to the mountain is sketchy. I’m wearing peeps, I have this gnarly backpack survival kit with a shovel and probes and all this stuff in it, and then I’m wearing a harness. I’m like, ‘Why do I need a harness?’ They go, ‘Dude, if you fall in a hole and you’re dead, we have to use it to drag you out.’ What? I don’t want to deal with that! Are you kidding me? I thought the knee injury was bad, I don’t want to die. I was grateful to just go out there and check it out. I had never been to Alaska before. I was pumped to check out the whole scene and go down some mountains and just take a look at everything. But it’s just not my thing right now.

Do you ever see it becoming your thing? It’s got to be a new challenge. Oh, it’s definitely a new challenge. But the hard thing about taking on a new challenge right now is that it’s like reading a book and then starting up another one when you haven’t even finished reading the first one. I still have so much to do in pipe and slope and with street rails. I just wasn’t ready. I don’t even call it backcountry—I just call it sketchy. When people say backcountry, they mean going and building a little jump into a landing. This was like AK descents—it was going down the steepest mountain you’ve ever seen.

Did you get anything done in Alaska? Oh, yeah. That’s the thing, it was scary and it wasn’t my thing but I did it anyway. I did descents and I hit cliffs. I say it was scary because it really was scary. But in a way, it was really fun because I’d get to the bottom of the hill and my heart was just pounding. You hit a little rock and the little rock is like a 20-foot drop-off that you saw from the helicopter.

Was it the actual terrain or what everybody had warned you of? It was both. I didn’t know who to listen to because everyone had a different opinion. The only person I really trusted was Terje because he won’t do anything sketchy. But I don’t think my riding ability out there was anywhere near his. And then everybody’s like, ‘Don’t follow Farmer, whatever you do.’

Right away, I found myself following Farmer, and he’s all, “I don’t know, Man. I think there’s a sinkhole over there.”

What was it like riding with Nick Perata, Farmer and Terje in AK? It was rad. I never really got to kick it with Farmer and hang out and ride before. And Terje’s just Terje. He’s super quiet and he’s got his whole deal. I felt bad because the one thing we did do that I was stoked on was Travis Rice and I built this huge wedge. It was a good 90-foot jump and I don’t think Farmer had ever come across anything like that. He just realized snowboarding’s changed. Him and Nick Perata were tripping out that night, all bummed. They were like, ‘We couldn’t hit the jump—it was huge.’

You’re not really known as a jibber, but you do have some rail skills. There is just something about the whole process—sneaking up, throwing snow on the takeoff and landing, digging out the stairs. I just got a taste of it the year before the White Album. I hit my first street rail with Mack Dawg, Ross Steffey and Kevin Zacher. I frontside slid a 29-stair with a little donkey thing at the bottom.

You can say ‘donkey dick’ in SNOWBOARDER if you want. Donkey dick, donkey dick, donkey dick.

Let’s not abuse it, all right? That’s what they call it—a donkey dick! I didn’t want the White Album to be a bunch of typical halfpipe contest stuff. I think there are more rail shots in it than anything else. I was fortunate to have had Jeff Anderson take me to the rail garden in Utah and teach me how to hit rails. Having somebody who was so good at rails, such a cool guy, who I fully trusted, helped me out. I am at the point with slopestyle and pipe where they are still super fun and I have room to grow, but rails are awesome. There are all these tricks to learn, like 270s, nosepresses, pretzels out and all that stuff. The next step for me is probably the backcountry with jumps into powder.

So you have some long-term plans for your snowboarding? I am always thinking about what I haven’t done yet. That is part of why I went to Alaska. I could have just said no and been over it, but I wanted to go take a look at it. I’d probably take back that statement that it sucks and just say that it was different. I wasn’t ready for anything when I went there and I didn’t know what to think. I was excited because I had never been able to go someplace and just ride powder. The most powder I have ever gotten was just popping off the side of some run and getting that slash.

You’ve never had a powder day? I have, but my powder days at Snow Summit were pretty lean.

Are the Olympics something you want to go after? At the end of the day, it is still just a contest and whoever wins, wins. I am not putting my whole life into it and this contest isn’t going to prove who I am. The reason why I would want to go is that I’ve watched the Olympics for so many years. It seems so cool to me to be a part of the whole thing and have my sport there with all the others, like downhill skiing, figure skating and ice hockey.

In snowboarding, you say you are constantly looking for a new challenge. Is it the same in skating, where you want to start looking beyond vert? There is so much room for me to grow with vert skating. Like if I did a 1080. Yesterday I was trying this trick and I don’t think anyone has ever done it. It is a frontside 540 body varial stalefish. There is so much more you can do with being able to kick your board around. In snowboarding, I think maybe we’ll find a limit because you can only spin so much without sacrificing your style.

Have you invented any tricks in snowboarding? I may have invented the alley-oop backside rodeo seven in the pipe, but that’s not like coming up with something brand new. With snowboarding, you don’t really have to do your own trick. I do McTwists and Keir does McTwists, but there is a big difference between them. Everybody makes the tricks their own; not everything is cookie cutter.

Where are you with your skating? I am still at the bottom. I need that year like I had when I was 16 in snowboarding, where I establish myself as a pro. It’s hard because I skate maybe three months out of the whole year.

Have you started to get more respect from other skaters? I definitely think I get way more respect from the guys because I have actually started doing all the contests and have been to the X Games. I didn’t spend years going through the amateur ranks. Because of snowboarding, I didn’t have time to do those events. There is no way I could substitute the winter X Games for an amateur skate contest. It was tough trying to work it out and I ended up finding time to go to the Slam City Jam, where I placed 4th in my first pro skate contest.

What do you think of all the parents out there who want their kid to be ‘the next Shaun White’? The first thing I wonder is if the kid wants it. As a kid, I wanted it so bad. Now parents are way more involved in that side of it. It’s like the soccer mom who wants their kid to be the best player on the field.

Did you even know what it meant to be a pro snowboarder at 8 years old? I didn’t even know what a sponsor was. I thought the pro thing was a label that meant you got to go to contests and travel. Now it seems like the biggest focus for kids is getting sponsored, getting money, getting free things. I get e-mails asking how to get sponsored and the best advice I can give them is, ‘Have fun, keep riding, get better and the sponsors will come.’

What is it like dealing with your groupies? To share an experience, I showed up at a contest and a girl started crying when she saw me. I was like, ‘Oh, my God!’ I felt bad when the girl started crying. I was all, ‘I didn’t do it.’

Is it easier to visualize tricks as you get older? It is definitely easier to land everything, for some reason. Now when I am in the air, even if things go wrong, I don’t panic. I close my eyes a lot of times on my 900s because I can feel where it is going to be as I come around. When I want to learn a new trick, I’ll think about it and as it goes through my head, I’ll picture myself doing it. How the sky is going to look and everything else. Then when I’m riding, I’ll just throw it. From that first try, I’ll know everything I need to know about how to land it.

How much of your success in snowboarding is talent and how much of it has been opportunity? I think it is a combination of both. It definitely takes a lot of hard work. I’ve caught my heel edge on plenty of 360s. But having the support of my sponsors and family has led to a lot of opportunities. Let’s just say I’m grateful for both.

Do you dream about snowboarding? You know, the drive is still there when you dream about snowboarding … and I do.

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