Winter Olympics: Shaun White on staying on top at 35 as he bids for fourth title at Beijing 2022

Shaun White announced himself on the world stage as a teenager at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, where he triumphed in snowboard halfpipe.

The American, now 35, says his greatest accomplishment is still being "on top of a sport that's ever-changing for so long".

"I am the oldest competitor. I kind of like it as a little badge of honour," he tells fellow Olympic snowboarder Aimee Fuller for BBC Ski Sunday.

'You will carry that for the rest of your life'

When he won the first of his Olympic golds, his mum was there in Italy watching her son compete and, he says, told him: "You will forever be known as Shaun White, the Olympic gold medallist. You will carry that title for the rest of your life."

Nicknamed 'The Flying Tomato' because of his long red hair, White was instantly recognisable.

"I was just 19," he says. "I had no idea how massive that was, how many people in the world were going to tune in and see me do my thing, and afterwards I couldn't really go anywhere. It definitely changed my life."

White says snowboarding was misunderstood at the beginning. His teachers struggled with accepting it when he asked them to set work for him while he was travelling to competitions.

"Every single step of the way felt like we were fighting to be accepted, or not looked at as if we were crazy, or that I was throwing my life away for a sport that wasn't a legitimate sport," he explains.

But White, and snowboarding, went mainstream and he soon amassed a fortune in endorsements, following up his first Olympics with a second gold in Vancouver in 2010 and excelling at the X Games.

White shot to snowboarding fame after winning gold at Turin in 2006

By 2013, he had won six superpipe titles in a row at the X Games, where he had also won in skateboarding - the first person to win medals in both the summer and winter series of the event.

'This is what it's like to lose at an Olympics'

But there is a gap in White's list of Olympic medals.

He left Sochi in 2014 empty-handed. He had crashed on his first run and when he entered the halfpipe as the last rider on his second, he couldn't land his tricks cleanly and the judges placed him fourth, out of the medal positions for the first time.

White admits he had lost the motivation and desire to succeed. He was isolated, training on his own private halfpipes, built for him by sponsors, where he could practise his own tricks without letting the competition see what he was working on.

But seeing his friends and family having fun on social media made him feel like he was missing out, and made it harder for him to focus on snowboarding.

"You have a revolving window on your phone of what everyone is up to," he says. "The things that you don't normally think about, that you normally shut out to get the job done.

"I had the winning run in my hands, I just couldn't do it. When I was at the top of the pipe I was standing there thinking 'wow, I'm going to lose'.

"It was like watching a movie where I couldn't control the outcome.

"Once I had lost, I awoke from this daydream and was like 'so this is what it is like to lose at an Olympics'."

'I'm about to win this'

It was a turning point for White. He ditched the private halfpipes and started training with other people again at Mammoth resort in California, where he had spent the early days of his career.

"Over time I realised I needed more people around me. I needed my team, my friend group and people that I work with and count on to make it fun and exciting," he says.

When it came to Pyeongchang in 2018, White qualified for the final with the highest score, meaning he would once again be the last rider down the course.

He had a score of 95.25 to beat - which had been laid down by Japanese teenager Ayumu Hirano.

"Fast forward to the Korea Olympics and it was deja vu," he says. "I'm the last guy to go, I had one run."

Only this time, White's mindset had switched to thinking "I'm about to win this".

And win he did, picking up his third Olympic gold with a score of 97.75 - the highest score ever recorded in the men's halfpipe at the Winter Olympics.

Four years on and he is back for what could be his final Olympics.

"I'm kind of picking the joy from every single moment instead of just putting my head down and just getting through it," White says.

"All athletes know that there is a finite amount of time that you have to do your craft. So as that door or window is closing, I think you kind of stop and take it all in and enjoy it."

But will Beijing be a repeat of Sochi or Pyeongchang?

"I don't know if I was really considering another [Olympics] after my last performance," White says. "I was so happy with how well that all went down in Korea.

"Every time it comes back around I'm like, 'how's the neck, how's everything feeling?' and I just make the call."

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