2018 Winter Olympics in South Korea

Out of context: Reply #19

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  • mg330

    I’m no Shaun White hater, but this sums up my general feelings on the guy, and I’m not alone in thinking this way

    Shaun White: The Anthesis of Snowboarding.

    Don’t get me wrong, he’s an incredible talent and always impressive. But he embodies everything snowboarding isn’t. And it bums me out because the Olympics are, for most Americans, the only exposure they have to snowboarding, for that brief day they see a little of the halfpipe competition interspersed with feel-good human interest stories. White is the only name they know, they get no exposure to 99% of the rest of the sport, including the camaraderie amongst pros in the mountains, the amazing skill of
    free-riding, weekend warriors like us who love being with their friends and having a great day, the breathtaking scenery of resorts, big mountain riding, urban riding, etc. I can’t imagine how many people don’t even grasp that basic novice-level snowboarding is attainable to them because all the see is pipe riding that looks super complex and dangerous. I’d give any thing for Olympic snowboarding to evolve to include some form of big mountain or free ride competition.

    White is an amazing rider and I’m excited to see him hopefully win again, but he’s an outcast if not somewhat of a pariah in the sport. He doesn’t hang with other pros (I’ve read as much several times in magazines over the years), he doesn’t film parts, he doesn’t just go out and cruise for the fun of it. It’s all business to him. I loved the movie First Descent because it took him out of his element into big mountains to learn from others and adapt his riding. But nothing like that since then, and that came out 13 years ago.

    Lastly, I’ll take a stylish method over some lab-created robotic madman trick any day of the week.

    • I had no idea he busted his face and needed 60+ stitches last summer. The footage is brutal!fooler
    • Same could be said for skateboarding and the X-Games.section_014
    • you can't blame him for that though, people that only know about him probably have no interest in sboarding, so if anything he is attracting eyes to theMiguex
    • spectrum of the sport.
      They guy is doing what he wants, it's up to the rest to look or not right?
      Miguex
    • I think the pros hate him cause he was in Smurfs 2.BH26
    • lol he was?
      There is a current in sboarding that is against the "acrobatics" sort of thing, which took the spotlight, but who cares?
      Miguex
    • I think vert is boring, slopestlye is the closest to what I enjoy but my favorite riders are not even participating, if you are not doing acrobaticsMiguex
    • non- snowboarding crowds don't care enough to watch. I wonder if there is a similar sentiment with curling lolMiguex
    • It would be great if the 'style' part of slopestyle scored higher. A massive, tweaked out 180 has as much or more style than a cork 11million or whatever.mandomafioso
    • Case in point, whoever that was, Ben Ferguson maybe, who did the massive air to fakie in the pipe on his first hit. That shit was dope.mandomafioso
    • It was the exact same with Tony and the 900 - "spectacle of" over the "substance of" the sport.ben_

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