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Alyssa Roenigk
SHAUN WHITE HAS been here before. Standing in front of a floor-length mirror in a hotel room in Snowmass Village, Colorado, he studies his image. All-black snowboard gear. A competition bib with an American flag sewn onto the front. An unrelenting expression. It’s all so familiar.
This is the first time White, 39, has seen himself in a snowboard bib since he last competed, at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, and something stirs. «I got all pumped up. I was like, that looks good,» he says. «That feels good. That old feeling, it calls me. It doesn’t go away.»
But White isn’t in Aspen to compete. In a few hours, he will take a ceremonial run through the Buttermilk Mountain halfpipe to open the March 2025 contest that has brought him to town. He’s nervous. Not about riding a halfpipe again, but about how he might feel while he’s riding. For three years, he’s worked to unravel who he is beyond Shaun White the competitor — without judges, medals and cheering sections defining him. He doesn’t want to squander that progress.
«When I focus on what I’m not doing, I miss competing,» White says. «But when I focus on what I am doing, I’m inspired. I still feel the glow of the career I had.»
White knows that if he put everything aside and returned to training, he could still be one of the best halfpipe snowboarders in the U.S. He sees other retired athletes making splashy comebacks and visualizes himself doing the same. «It’s been an internal war,» he says.
newly retired athlete wondering what to do next.
There were those close to White who thought that, after he retired, he would leave snowboarding entirely, maybe open a winery in France or travel the world to surf. White didn’t have a blueprint for the athlete afterlife, but he had spent decades cataloging the ways in which he would change the sport and unconsciously preparing for this next chapter — one that has ensured his influence on snowboarding will be felt throughout the upcoming Milan Cortina Winter Olympics and beyond.
«I had my moment,» White says. «I want to usher in a new era for snowboarding.»
He takes one last look in the mirror and imagines what it would feel like to drop into a halfpipe wearing a competition bib again, hear the roar of a crowd and feel a rush of adrenaline. «Standing at the top of the halfpipe wearing that bib,» White says, «it would have been too much for me.»
He peels off the bib, lays it on the bed and walks out into his future.
«THANK YOU FOR believing in me,» White says to a group of snowboarders and coaches gathered on the roof deck of a three-story temporary VIP lounge at the base of the Buttermilk halfpipe. «But know this isn’t about me. This isn’t about the resort owners or the broadcast partners. It’s about you.»
White leads a riders’ meeting at the inaugural stop of The Snow League, the contest series he founded to provide what he believes has been missing from the sport: better paydays, a more relatable television broadcast and a cohesive championship. White endured countless meetings like this during his nearly 30 years as a competitor, but he never believed he was part of the conversation. He wants the riders seated in front of him to feel like they can shape what this league becomes.
«Shaun is bringing in new sponsors and a lot of visibility and opportunities for us,» says 19-year-old Bea Kim, who was recently named to her first U.S. Olympic halfpipe team. «He wants to know what the athletes think, so the sport will go in the direction that we want it to go.»
the 2022 X Games champ and Olympic halfpipe bronze medalist, missed a year of competition after Beijing because of health issues and took a significant hit to her earnings. The week after she won the inaugural event in Aspen — and the prize money — she sent The Snow League a letter.
«She’s like, ‘I take the Greyhound bus overnight to meet with my sponsors,'» says Miles Nathan, White’s longtime friend, business partner and co-founder of The Snow League. «‘I won the first event, and it changed my life.'»
THERE’S A STORY White likes to tell about himself at 15. He was in Sapporo, Japan, competing at the 2002 Toyota Big Air contest. The other snowboarders were all in their mid-to-late 20s and had spent the first couple of days in Japan partying and shopping. On contest day, they decided as a group that they would tell the organizers the jump was too sketchy and split the prize purse between them.
White was the lone holdout. He had been working his tail off and knew he finally had the trick to beat them. The event went on and White won. He was thousands of miles from home, surrounded by established riders whom he respected and wanted to like him. And they were pissed.
«That was a turning point for me,» White says. «I realized, I’m here to compete, and I want to win, and I’m done vying for your approval. In the end, I would rather be happy with myself and my decisions than get the approval of somebody I’m competing against.»
White realized that for the rest of his career, being liked would be at odds with being the best.
sexual harassment lawsuit in 2017 that changed how some people think of him, many in the sport didn’t believe White represented them. He was a snowboarder, but he wasn’t in snowboarding.
«Back then, there was a sense of it not mattering what the results were or what brand you represented,» says Burton owner Donna Carpenter. «We were all part of this unusually inclusive community because snowboarders had been excluded from so many places. We saw ourselves as being outside of the mainstream, and Shaun stuck out because he had his eye on the prize.»
There were those who believed White changed the sport too fast. He was the first snowboarder to hire a mainstream agent, appear on the cover of Rolling Stone and pioneer risky tricks many questioned were even possible within the constraints of 22-foot halfpipe walls. Although snowboarding has evolved, it has never fully embraced the level of fierce ambition that White unapologetically embodied.
«When I first started competing, it was weird. You’d get to the bottom of your run, and everybody said the same thing: ‘It’s nice weather. I’m having a good time. I’m just super stoked to be out here riding with my friends,'» White says. «As I grew into my own, I was honest. I was like, ‘I’m disappointed. I landed that run six times in practice and I just blew it in the competition.'»
White also wasn’t «just out here riding with my friends.» He respected his rivals, but he didn’t want to look around the top of a halfpipe and care too much about the people he wanted to beat. He didn’t understand athletes who counted their competitors among their closest friends, so he kept the contest blinders on long after the contests ended and kept his friend group tight.
These days, when White stands in front of the current generation of athletes, he realizes he cares about every rider at the top of the halfpipe. And while snowboarding still isn’t as cutthroat as other sports, it has progressed so much that the riders White is getting to know are a lot more like him than like the guys who wanted to ditch the competition and split the prize purse.
«I like to think the decisions I made in my career and how I conducted myself in interviews gives new competitors the road map to be competitive, to say, ‘I’m here to win,'» he says.
White believes The Snow League will provide those competitors with a platform to earn an unprecedented level of money, respect and recognition. «I achieved a level of fame and success in my career that I know wasn’t accessible to everyone,» White says. «Every rider in this league deserves that.»
WHITE IS BACK where he began, surrounded by energetic young snowboarders and dropping into a halfpipe on the Palmer Glacier at Oregon’s Mount Hood. He throws a few airs and then starts launching tricks, including his signature skyhook. A young rider lands a crippler 540, takes her board off at the bottom of the pipe and starts hiking back to the top. «Nice crippler. That looked good,» White says.
When White was a kid, he would travel here with his family from their home in Southern California and sleep in their white van in the hotel parking lot. He and his siblings were day campers at Windells. Their parents, Roger and Cathy, couldn’t afford the weeklong price tag, so he and his brother, Jesse, and sister, Kari, brushed their teeth in the public restrooms and ate packed lunches. Roger spent his mornings digging the halfpipe in exchange for time for his kids to ride it.
White knows that snow sports are even more expensive now than when he was a kid, so getting the next generation hooked — and finding the next halfpipe stars — requires serious investment. He has bought into these camps at Mount Hood, which provide coaching for skiers and snowboarders at all levels. He has also invested in the Snöbahn indoor training facilities in Denver, supports the freeride team at Bear Mountain in Southern California and sponsors up-and-coming riders as well as Olympic hopefuls through his snowboard brand, Whitespace. «He wants to pay it forward,» Carpenter says.
plan to launch a league of their own.
«We’ve been talking about an independent league for 20 years,» says Ryan Runke, an agent who represents Olympic snowboarders and skiers. «If Shaun’s the first to crack the code and make competitive snowboarding relevant to the general public, that’s a legacy.»
In Milan Cortina, White will be in the hosting booth during men’s and women’s snowboard halfpipe finals. He’ll also be a correspondent for «The Today Show» and co-host the opening ceremony on Feb. 6. These Olympics are the first in 20 years where he’s not competing. He’s nervous. Not about commentating. But about how he might feel working from the sidelines.
«It’ll be bittersweet,» White says. «I told NBC, keep me busy. Drown me in interviews. I don’t want to sleep.»
White doesn’t understand those who thought he would walk away from the sport he has dedicated his life to, from the only life he has ever known.
«I think Shaun has been largely misunderstood by people in our industry, and I include myself in that,» says Kevin English, CEO of White’s Unrivaled Action Sports and the longtime president of We Are Camp, which owns Windells and High Cascade ski and snowboard camps. «Now he’s showing the person behind the mask, and it’s genuine.»
Back in 2022, White posted a black-and-white photo from the bottom of the Beijing halfpipe, with the caption: «Thank you, snowboarding.» Now, he reposts that image with a second photo recreating it. In this shot, he’s standing in the halfpipe holding a snowboard and wearing a Snow League bib — except this one simply says, «Staff.»
ON NEW YEAR’S EVE, White sat down at a piano for the first time in a long while and played Adele’s «Someone Like You,» the only song he knows on keys. While his friends sang along, he felt something stir, remembering his old love of performing music.
Two weeks later, he found himself giving a fake name to a guy at a warehouse near the Van Nuys Airport and pulling the cover off a 1960s midcentury Baldwin piano. It was delivered to his home in Los Angeles a few days later.
Typically, White wouldn’t have acted so impulsively. He would have overthought each step of the process, from looking for the perfect instrument to deciding on the precise corner of his home to tuck it out of the way. «My New Year’s thing was to act in the moment,» White says.
This year, White is challenging himself to reconnect with old passions, take big swings and think about what is most meaningful in the long run. Leaning into his family life and relationships looks different now.
«There have been big changes in my life for sure,» he says. «I was heading in one direction and now I find myself somewhere else.»
In September, White and Dobrev called off their engagement and separated after five years. «It really puts life and relationships into perspective when you’re at a crossroads and you come to a decision with somebody,» he says. «The mindset hasn’t changed. I still want love in my life. I still want a family.»
White turns 40 this year. He’s spending time with his family and old friends and pouring himself into his businesses. He’s traveling with his guitar again. He’s looking forward to this Olympics, the culmination of his three decades in snowboarding, and the final two events of the inaugural Snow League season.
«I’m headed into the big four-oh,» White says. «What’s this next 10 years going to look like? What kind of guy am I going to be?»
