At the end of the final set of moves in the third round of the Beijing Winter Olympics Snowboarding Men's U-Shaped Track Technique, Sean White slid to the sideline, smiling softly, waiting for his score to come out.
The 35-year-old veteran is the well-deserved king of the U-shaped pool, and at this moment he is not as prosperous as he was 16 years ago, nor is he as passionate as he was 4 years ago; the years have engraved traces on him, but at this moment he also has tears in his eyes, and finally he won the fourth place with 85.00 points, but no one will forget how many classic moments the iconic figure of snowboarding has left in the past.
Don't live to be 20 years old?
Sean White was born in 1986 into an ordinary family in California, where his father worked at a water utility and his mother was a restaurant waitress, but Shawn Jr.'s arrival cast a shadow over the family. Doctors said he had a congenital heart malformation, venous blood mixed with arterial blood, and said he only had a 10% chance of surviving to the age of 20! Before the age of 5, he was taken to the operating table twice, and the doctor's admonition was that the child should avoid strenuous exercise.
However, Little Sean confirmed his passion very early on, he skied with his brother, who was 7 years older than himself, there was no snow in California, and the family of five drove to and from major ski resorts. Sometimes he was awakened at night, sometimes he was chased away by the caretaker in the parking lot, and life was very hard; but it was skiing that saved Sean, and a short documentary film made by his mother helped Sean get his first sponsorship. Sean, who has no worries, has been emerging since he was 13 years old, and even had the opportunity to storm the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics in 2002, but unfortunately the qualifiers lost by 0.3 points, otherwise we would have seen a 6-time Winter Olympic veteran.
Not a dimension
From 2003 to 2005, White won the Winter SnowboardIng Championship at the World Extreme Games for three consecutive years, sweeping all kinds of competitions with a sweeping momentum. This made the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin his runway! In anticipation, he did not disappoint all the spectators, made all kinds of jaw-dropping moves in the final, far beyond the ability of other players of the same era, and won his first Winter Olympic gold medal with 46.8 points (before changing the rules) without pressure! "Flying Tomatoes" soared over Turin, making White a global icon of snowboarding!
However, White did not stop flying, but flew higher and higher, far surpassing the players of the same era. As the main opponent, Jimmy Nicolas once said that "Shaun White can easily do the action that I can't do in my life" Indeed, more than a decade ago, subject to the process of skill development, the advanced level of equipment and the situation of the pistes, many players are still struggling with the completion of the 900-degree action, and White has begun to try 1260 degrees. At the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, he showed the world what extreme sports are with the gold medal locked in the final round! Double Mctwist 1260！ This was a move that no one had ever done in a game at the time. White is breaking the ceiling of the sport and leaving others with himself completely out of the same dimension!
Retired from the contract
However, long-term training left White full of injuries, right knee surgery in 2004, right ankle fracture in 2006, left ankle fracture in 2009 and 2012, left knee surgery in 2012, and ankle fracture in 2013! and countless minor injuries. Snow training in the U-shaped pool is quite strenuous, and completing an action means hundreds of thousands of failures, and the price of failure is to smash the snow slopes from all parts of the body. Finally, the accumulation of these injuries, coupled with the psychological pressure accumulated by the audience's high expectations, broke out in the Sochi Winter Olympics, where he only finished fourth.
However, White said that "the moment he lost the game made him feel very relieved", yes, he is not Superman, he will also be injured, he will also lose. After that, White left the arena, after all, he was 27 years old at the time, and he needed some rest physically and mentally. He began working in music, film and television, and other commercial activities. With his extraordinary influence on the field, he quickly succeeded. Start a band, start a company, make a brand, and enjoy California's sunny beaches. However, the love of snow in his heart made him finally unable to resist the desire to return to the field, and in October 2017, less than 4 months before the PyeongChang Winter Olympics, White chose to make a comeback!
Pyeongchang was enshrined in the First World War
It is not easy to make up for the 3-year empty window, and with the improvement of the level of young players in the world, sitting on the mountain is no longer enough for White to win the championship easily; and the purpose of his choice to comeback is very obvious, that is, to impact the winter Olympic gold medal again! To this end, he began practicing the 1440-degree movement, but in one training session, he made a mistake while practicing this movement, and his head hit the edge of the U-pool groove, and his face was stitched with 62 stitches! However, in the darkness, Pyeongchang seems to be the stage of his destiny. In the last Olympic points race, he made mistakes in the first two rounds at the bottom of the points, and if he did not show a shocking performance, he would not be able to qualify for the Winter Olympics, and his comeback would become empty talk.
What's the harm with 62 stitches? White took out his 1440-degree move and won the championship with full marks, catching the last train of the Winter Olympics. In the Winter Olympics, rival Hirano Bumon completed a set of high-scoring actions with 95.25 points, and it was still not enough to win a 1440-degree action. At this moment, 31-year-old White is just as he has chosen to break boundaries and complete historic breakthroughs in the past few years, "Flying Tomatoes" is still so familiar - two consecutive 1440-degree moves, earth-shattering performances! 97.75 points! This is Sean White.
Beijing curtain called off
Before the third round, White scored 85.00 points with his smooth movements. Many of the other players in the same competition are post-00s, and he is already 35 years old. He is the idol of all other players, tens of thousands of snowboarders have seen his countless classic scenes on this road, at this moment the results are not very important, when he sees that today's snowboarding has developed to this stage, high difficult moves flying in the sky, rather than riding like he did in the beginning, he can also watch these descendants grow rapidly from the perspective of a leader. Competing with them makes him even more passionate, and it would be even more perfect if he won a medal or even a gold medal!
The first 1440-degree movement of the front foot was successful, but after the second back-foot movement of 1440 degrees, White fell heavily on the snow slope, and this set of actions that made him 4 years ago was not completed in his curtain performance. He knew it was his last jump at the Winter Olympics, took off his helmet, combed his already short hair like a child, and knew that his score would inevitably stop at 85.00 points and not win the podium. But none of this mattered, the scenes of the past 4 Winter Olympics surged into his heart, and he left tears of emotion when he had mixed feelings. This time, he was really going to say goodbye!
Good bye! The king of snowboarding , Sean White.
(Aibao)