Last time you saw Shaun he was rocking the Olympic gold medal. Will vert skating domination be next? Bo Bridges
Shadowing Shaun: The Blog
Jun 25 2006 / Louisville, KYUpdate! End of the Road
In the end, Shaun did not do as well this weekend as everyone had expected. It's easy to tell what everyone expected because everywhere you turn you hear his name or see his face or see HIM.
Shaun will not be skating in the Skate Vert Finals. He tried extremely hard to put together two good runs during prelims today, but in the end wasn't able to ride out a full 45 seconds (in fact the only people to actually complete their runs from his heat were PLG & Tas Pappas.) Shaun did do some impressive things in his runs, some huge airs and a kickflip indy over the channel, but in the end it was the McTwist on his first run & the that very channel gap on his second which would be the end of him in Skate Vert here at the Dew Tour stop #1, Louisville.
In the end, Shaun did not do as well this weekend as everyone had expected. It's easy to tell what everyone expected because everywhere you turn you hear his name or see his face or see HIM.
Shaun will not be skating in the Skate Vert Finals. He tried extremely hard to put together two good runs during prelims today, but in the end wasn't able to ride out a full 45 seconds (in fact the only people to actually complete their runs from his heat were PLG & Tas Pappas.) Shaun did do some impressive things in his runs, some huge airs and a kickflip indy over the channel, but in the end it was the McTwist on his first run & the that very channel gap on his second which would be the end of him in Skate Vert here at the Dew Tour stop #1, Louisville.
Irony is part of skateboarding (oh, and part of life too), but our photographer pointed out something very ironic a minute ago when he said "what sucks is that he kept doing great, clean stuff in between his runs." And he was right - Shaun was laying out huge, picture perfect McTwists before & in between his runs. But in the end, Shaun didn't put the whole thing together, and this cost him a spot in the finals. So maybe it sucks that he couldn't get it all in one place when it counted, or maybe it's good because at least he's still got it (yeah, like he could loose it.)
- Cody Allen
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First Heat (Skate Vert Prelims)
Just checked out the first heat of the skate-vert prelims, which features Shaun. It was a packed heat but the only skaters that stayed on their boards for the whole 45 second lengths of their runs were Pierre Luc-Gagnon and Tas Pappas.
Second heat is going on now so check back soon for a full update.
- Cody Allen
______________________________________Shaun White...The Press Conference
Well a press conference it was! 20 media personnel in "The House of Dew" huddled around cameras, notepads & tape recorders. Most of the questioning was dominated by a man standing up front, of medium build, and dressed in a denim colored collard shirt with a local news stations call letters on it. He asked all of the standard questions, I'll sum up all the answers here:
Shaun has had a crazy year, it's all amazing and slightly a blur to him, he's met a lot of famous people & he's an extremely happy guy.
Then there was a break in the question asking - a break long enough for me to shout out "Family Guy or The Simpsons?" Many people congratulated me on what a good question it was, but I can't really take responsibility for that because to me it is the only question that ever really needs to be asked in a situation like that (think of it as the modern day "boxers or briefs", you gotta wonder how Clinton would stand that test.) "Oh, Family Guy!" Shaun replied, and went on to talk about all of the nights where he finds himself up late, watching Family Guy, while all the time knowing that he has to wake up early the next day.
I proceeded to ask him "Who do you identify with more, the Coyote or the Roadrunner?" He smiled "you should like, write these questions down and submit them to me." I'll take that as a good ol' nod-of-the-head to my supreme question asking abilities, thank you very much.
I'm going to watch the skateboard vert practice right now, the crowd keeps screaming - something amazing must keep happening over and over and over again.
- Cody Allen
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June 23, 2006 - Skate Vert Practice
Skate vert practice started today and it is unbelievably fun to watch. There's a lot I could say about it, but this is the Shaun White blog, so guess who I'm going to focus on. When I arrived it was early and no one was doing anything too notable (of course notable when we're talking about Burnquist is a lot different than notable when we're talking about...say...me) and Shaun wasn't skating nearly as well as I'd expected. I was disappointed and a little let down...
Then he decided to use the roll in instead of dropping from the coping, and in doing so, must have tricked himself into thinking he was snowboarding, because he suddenly laid out a run not all that different from his gold medal run at last year's Winter Olympics. Well okay, there were no back-to-back 1080s, but those are vastly overrated.
It was good though, to regain faith in Shaun (once again, teaches me to doubt Shaun's capabilities - do you see a theme repeating here?) Regardless, he got that run out of his system and then proceeded back down to the coping and started feverishly working on his switch-frontside 720s. Yes, he landed it, and it was big. Photos to come very soon.
- Cody Allen
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June 23, 2006
Today the vert ramp in the Kentucky Expo Center will most definitely be torn apart by Shaun White, bro-brah! But no, seriously, Skateboard Vert Practice will be running all day, and we should have some pictures of Shaun getting a feel for the ramp sometime a little bit later today (just check back around 2PM, EST)...
On a whole other note (yet still in the "Key of Shaun"...oh! I crack myself up, no really, I do, every once in awhile I just completely blow myslelf away), Shaun White will be doing a press conference today at 5:30PM (EST). This unbelievably punctual blog which you are currently reading, will be there, covering all the action (i.e. a reporter standing up, asking Shaun a question, sitting down, Shaun answering the question, another reporter standing up, asking a question...) because I like to act as though I am a serious reporter (the word BLOG at the top of the page doesn't help with professional morale). But, again, seriously, there'll probably be some interesting stuff disgusted, so just think of it as an exclusive interview with Shaun White! That's right! I (and dozens of other writers & journalists) get an exclusive interview with Shaun White today at 5:30!
Meanwhile, since no one will ever get enough Shaun (and if they will, then they certainly already have, long before this blog was created), you can check out this page right here, for a photo gallery of Shaun & the rest of the Adio Footwear team in Nashville (skating & being really really cool - so cool).
- Cody Allen
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June 22, 2006 - Who's the Fool Now, Fool?
If you had asked me three years ago if I would ever see the day when Shaun White was the favorite in a skateboarding competition with Bob Burnquist, Bucky Lasek, Rune Glifberg, and Pierre Luc-Gagnon, all of whom would make up just part of the plethora of talent running through the air, I would have told you that you were a fool. Just that. Simply a fool. At the time everyone knew Shaun could skate, and anyone who'd seen his part in Mack Dawg's "Stand & Deliver" also knew that he was very good at it...frighteningly so. But there is a vast difference between having very good skate shots in a snowboard video and being one of the best skateboarders in the world.
Shaun's first showing at the Summer X-Games was valiant. Sixth place is a pretty damn good ranking especially when you consider that he was probably the only person in the competition that had never made the conscious decision to dedicate his life to skateboarding. At this point Shaun had swept the Winter X-Games once for snowboarding, so no one (that didn't know him) was expecting him to take the skateboard world by storm. (On a side-note, and just to add to the excessive allure of his excellence, I also happen to know that he'd just picked up a guitar around this time and was already capable of slaughtering a Led Zeppelin tune or two without even knowing the names of the chords he was playing.)
So now, three years later, in a stadium in Louisville, it is quite clear where we stand. As Shaun strolls around the ramps, searching out a decent place to watch the BMX Park Prelims from, as the groups of teenage girls scream at him from the balcony, as the thundering voice booms out from the ceiling speakers, shouting something about Shaun being the "returning skate vert champion", it is now very obvious that I am the fool here. Teaches me to have any doubt in Shaun's capabilities. Well, fool or no fool, I do know that these days in Louisville are going to be ones to watch, and the only thing I enjoy more in sport than watching Shaun try to win something, is watching him actually do it.
- Cody Allen
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The Shaun White Album: Side Two
June, 9 2006
At the center of the Winter Olympics hype machine, one American athlete lived up to the word on the street and had the time of his life in Torino. On his second of three runs, Shaun White put down huge back-to-back 1080s, followed by frontside and backside 900s, sealing up the Gold medal in time to take a leisurely victory lap in round three and contemplate the oncoming media onslaught. But you probably already know that story.
2005 was one hell of a year for the kid with the fiery hair, starting long before the first snowfall with a first place finish skateboarding on the vert ramp at the Panasonic Open, third place skating at the Right Guard Open, and a Silver medal at the X Games, where he also came damned closed to landing the first-ever 1080 in the best trick contest.
Once the white stuff started dumping, White was happy to oblige: in the lead-up to the Olympics, he won just about every major half-pipe snowboarding event, including the X Games halfpipe and slopestyle contests. After the Olympics, he went and took Gold in the halfpipe and slopestlye at the US Open Snowboarding Championships too, for a grand total of 12 major season victories. As if all the flashy and technical competition riding weren’t enough, he also earned props from the hardcore snowboard purists for tackling some truly humbling big-mountain Alaskan backcountry terrain for the movie First Descent.
Any activity that involves standing sideways on a board owes a debt not only to surfing (you might not have been very surprised to learn, watching MTV Cribs, that White can also throw down in the water), but also to every other board sport: the feedback loop between surfing, skateboarding, snowboarding, and now wind, wake, kite, and sky boarding is pushing each of these sports perpetually forward. Any boarder worth his salt in one sport can probably hold his own in any of the others with a pretty decent learning curve, but White is another thing altogether. There’s a reason people were calling him Future Boy long before that one about the tomato caught on… which brings us back to skateboarding.
White claims skateboarding is more difficult and more personally satisfying than snowboarding, and tricks like his body varial frontside rodeo 540 (try doing that one on a snowboard!) only emphasize the point. Entering some vert contests in the snowboarding off-season is much more than cross-training for White, especially now that he’s got so many nice notches on his snowboard bindings. He went pro as a skater in 2003 while along for the ride on Tony Hawk’s Gigantic Skatepark Tour, and has followed his hero Hawk to Birdhouse Skateboards and Adio Shoes, nice complements to a top-shelf snowboarding sponsor roster including Burton, Oakley, Mountain Dew, Target, T-Mobile, and PlayStation.
Expect him to be a force as the youngest vert competitor (he turns 20 in September) at every stop on the Dew Tour this summer, and at the X Games, where he’s sure to be back at it with the 1080 and also has his eyes on the Big Air contest on the MegaRamp, an event he was born to win.
MegaRamp originator and defending champ Danny Way (a child skate prodigy himself, back around the time White was born), current holder of the Guinness World Record for a 79-foot air, must be on edge after watching White effortlessly launch 100-foot gaps on a snowboard. Call it the Attack of the Killer… well, you get the idea.
