And You Thought The X Games Stroked Shaun White’s Ego? | Olympic Editorial #2

Posted by: Dave Berry | Feb 17, 10

First of all read this: http://www.nbcolympics.com/olympicpulse/blogs/blog=theboardroom/postid=414019.html#boardings+gone+time and tell me that Shaun White's shlong didn't rip through his Burton pants if his debit card didn't already burn them off his ginger kid ass. This is what it has come to in the eyes of the general public (people that don't ride); Shaun White=Michael Jordan+Wayne Gretskey+John Elway+Babe Ruth as far as riding goes. Once again I feel obligated to state that I'm NOT disputing his ability to ride. The day you see me throw a double McTwist 1260 is the day you get to see me die. What bothers me is that he IS the face of riding for the rest of the world. How did this happen?

Well first of all we have the X Games, both summer and winter to blame for this. Skateboarding already had Tony Hawk (and I'm not taking anything away from Mr. Hawk either, for the record) and not even Bob Burnquist or Rune Glifberg could stop this kid from burning up the standings right behind Mr. Hawk. In the opposite season he was flat-out dominating the snowboarding because snowboarding didn't already have an equivalant to Mr. Hawk. This resulted in disgusting amounts of cross-over coverage from your buddy Sal on ESPN because this kid from California was straight out slaying it in the half pipe in both seasons. Snowboarding was finally introduced into the Winter Olympics in 1998 and the X Games finally started gaining mainstream attention. Older people were actually watching snowboarding on TV and talking about it in bars with relatively younger dudes like myself who just came down to watch the games because we couldn't steal cable or ran out of beer, or both.

This kind of media exposure only leads to more media exposure and finally big companies sponsoring riders. Ok, it was Target sponsoring White that finally broke it wide open, which I kind of find odd because fucking Nike sponsored Bam but outside of the 2.5 Jackass "movies" he never made it off MTV in the public eye. That reminds me, if you somehow haven't ever seen CKY2K then you're a total poseur. Then again he made a shitload of money without your mom knowing who he is so I suppose that's better for skateboarding and Bam's public image.

So here we are in the midst of only the third time in human history that snowboarding has been allowed in the Winter Olympics (Yes, allowed. Sports have to be approved to get into the Olympics) and Mr. White is the spotlight on the men's superpipe, which totally sucks for Louie Vito because that dude deserves a lot more spotlight than he ever gets. I guess I'm still just not comfortable with snowboarding having a certified marquee celebrity associated with it. If J.P. walker wasn't so busy trying to be a wigga I'd bet he'd be right up there too, but as we all know that's just not his style, bra. Unnnh. Todd Richards could have been, but i guess he got too old on us. What about Jeremy Jones? That dude cold rips, but it's not where the X Games or the Olympics are. Correction, Jeremy Jones does rip in B.C., but you've gotta snowmobile in to find him. How about Danny Kass? He rides park and pipe. I'm sure he could pull some steez off that nobody has ever seen before. Wait, he's too punk rawk. He just doesn't have the amplitude that White has.

Alright, for the most part I'm above wishing people harm and I'm not going to do it here because the real America needs to win the gold in this event tonight. Hell, we invented it for beer's sake, but I am going to play the role of the patient iconoclast. Despite what nbc.com and expn.com say without saying, Shaun White is not immortal nor invincible. He snowboards and skateboards. He's going to get hurt sooner or later and may never be able to ride anything ever again. Remember Christopher Reeve? Irony is indeed a powerful force. When the "Flying Tomato" goes "SPLAT" we're going to see another dude get all the spotlight. For the sake of snowboarding I just hope it's more than one guy, and in the spirit of things I also hope he's an American.

Shred Hard.

Dave Berry.