Shaun White Goes Public On Private Pipe

Shaun: It was based off the idea that comes from Tony Hawk, who has a warehouse in Carlsbad, where I live. And, it’s his private ramp. It’s unreal because you can go there and skate and geez, the last time I was there, it was myself, Bucky Lasek, Bob Burnquist, and like five other dudes; really good skaters. It’s a cool place to go and to skate. It’s the best ramp in the world. It’s indoors so it’s always going to be good weather. And, you don’t get hassled as much. I would show up at the local skate park, and I’m skating and it’s empty. And I’m like, “This is perfect. I’m doing good.” You know what I mean? “There’s no one here; I’m having a great time.” And then, I see this couple of people setting up balloons, and I’m like, “What is going on?” And then, I saw a kid, and I’m like, “Don’t tell me there’s a birthday party.” And vans start rolling up for the kid’s birthday party. They’re like, “Shaun! Yeah!” You know what I mean? They’re like, “You got Shaun for your birthday?” They’re like, “You want cake? You want cake?” And I’m like, “No cake.” So I started calling in and saying, “There’s no birthday today, right?”

PM: You’ve got to go at dawn or the middle of the night.

Shaun: So, it was more of a privacy thing and safety as well. I was at Park City Ride, and we had this somewhat semi-roped-off area. All these people started cruising up. This huge audience then formed, and people were almost getting run over by snowmobiles. And what happened was a kid on skis had decided he was done watching and goes down and cuts through the middle of what we were doing. And as my friend was going up to do just a quarter-pipe he got cut off by the kid. So he reroutes, goes flying out of the quarter-pipe, and now he’s not focused on what he’s doing, so he goes flying out, lands, and he broke his wrist. So Silverton is great, and Red Bull built a half-pipe. It was definitely fun, but it was more of a filming thing than anything. We were out there filming and other athletes came in. Heikki Sorsa’s a Finnish snowboarder. A guy, Kier Dillon, he’s just a good rider, a really cool friend. It was a blast. It was really cool.

PM: What’s the development process like when you come up with a new trick? How does it work?

Shaun: Usually it stems from something I’ve already done or something that I’ve seen. Like if you do a 720, your natural thing would be to do a 900. Add another 180 to it, or to do a further spin, or to do a different grab, or something like that. But it’s a funny process because you’ve got to rework the way you think. Even though you’re adding another 180, you’ve got to, like your brain is so programmed to stop at a certain point, open up, and look for the landing. You have to program yourself to not do that, to keep going. And so, it’s like resetting the way you look at it. But yeah, it’s definitely a little process.

PM: When you’re training, what kind of safety precautions do you guys use? Harnesses, foam pits, or…

Shaun: I’ve seen guys who try to use airbags. I haven’t landed in an airbag yet. We had a foam pit for most of the skating stuff that I’ve done. Snow foam pits are nice. I’ve tried that a little.