Shaun White

Today I don't have much to talk about so I thought I'd address the sport's most famous athlete, Shaun White. Before I start I want to put it out there that I DO respect Shaun White for doing what he has for the sport of snowboarding, both by inventing tricks and getting more publicity into the sport. However, there is a lot that he does that I do not like. First and foremost, he is not a snowboarder's snowboarder. He seems to care more about his individual progress and success than he does about the progression of the sport as a whole. I say this because, as many of you know, he had a private pipe built for him last year in the middle of nowhere, Colorado. But, he did not share the pipe with any other fellow snowboarders and he hid is new tricks, double corks, from the rest of the field for a long time. On the other hand Kevin Pearce, a true snowboarder's snowboarder, had a private pipe built and shared it with a number of other snowboarders. Snowboarding is not like figure skating where everything is competitive, people are meant to progress together and have fun doing it. The only competition that should happen is at the actual events, aside from that, everyone should be riding together trying to get better as a group. Also, I understand that being the prodigy that he was, some arrogance must have gotten to Shaun White's head. But he acts as though he is the only good snowboarder out there, when in fact that could not be farther from the truth. There are plenty of other snowboarders out there who I believe to be as good as him or better than him in their own events. Travis Rice, for example, is a far better all around rider because, he can ride ANYTHING. Eiki Helgason is a far better rail rider than White, and Torstein Horgmo, or Halldor Helgason could easily beat Shaun in a slopestyle competition. I think that as a pipe rider few can beat Shaun but if you were to put him in the back country he would not fare as well. Lastly, although this is not a REAL knock on Shaun, when he does his tricks he tends to do easy grabs. This is not to say that what he is doing is not hard, because it is ridiculous. All I am saying is that when Shaun White does a double cork he grabs is toes, when Danny Davis does a double cork he grabs his tail. What Davis does is exponentially harder, not to mention the fact that it looks a lot better. All this is not to say that a I dont respect Shaun as a snowboarder, I'm just saying that there is a lot he does that I don't like.