Shaun White Making Room for a New Generation?

February 13, 2014 • Blog, Culture, Entertainment, Sports

American Shaun White went into this year’s Olympics at Sochi expecting to walk away with his third consecutive gold medal, a feat that only seven people have done. Instead, the much-favoured snowboarder walked away with nothing, placing fourth in the halfpipe.

Rising from the ranks was 19-year-old Iouri Podladtchikov from Switzerland (better known as I-Pod). The young Swiss managed to strip the gold medal out of the cold fingers of White. I-Pod pulled off a trick he invented aptly named “YOLO” (You Only Live Once), a trick which White himself has had trouble mastering. The trick involves pulling off a total of 1440 degrees of spin, two of which are head-over-heel flips and two 360-degree turns.

After the event White stated that he was disappointed and “hate[d] the fact I nailed it in practice, but it happens. It’s hard to be consistent.”

White had earlier pulled out of the slopestyle contest in order to put all his efforts into the halfpipe.

This was the first year since the halfpipe was introduced to the Olympics in 1998 that an American hasn’t won a medal in the competition. Ayumu Hirano and Taku Hiraoka, a Japanese pair, won silver and bronze during the competition.

http://www.canada.com/olympics/news/canadas-derek-livingston-finishes-19th-in-olympic-snowboard-halfpipe

Halfpipe I-Pod Iouri Podladtchikov olympics shaun White Slopestyle Snowboarding sochi YOLO