In an iconic snowboarding career that began in the early 2000s, Shaun White revolutionized the sport, claiming three Olympic gold medals and more than a dozen Winter X Games gold medals while becoming its most visible star.
He retired from competition after the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, but now he’s on a mission to transform the sport in a different way. He has founded a new tour for halfpipe snowboarders and freeskiers called The Snow League, debuting this weekend in Aspen, where he dominated the Winter X Games from 2003 to 2013.
En route to Aspen, he stopped in Denver to visit Snöbahn, a Thornton indoor action sports facility in which he is an investor.
“This is something I would have killed to have near my home when I was growing up, loving these sports — snowboarding, skateboarding,” said White, who grew up in San Diego. “I would be here every day.”
The 38,000-square-foot space features four “ski slopes” — inclined moving ramps — where people can learn to ski and snowboard year-round. It also has performance trampolines, a big-air jump with an airbag for landings and a skate park. It opened a year ago, eight years after owner Sadler Merrill opened a smaller version in Centennial.
“I’m so hyped to partner with Snöbahn,” White said. “We hope to build more in other cities.”
White emerged as a superstar who transcended his sport at the 2006 Winter Olympics with long-flowing red hair that earned him the nickname “The Flying Tomato” and made him a darling of NBC’s Olympic coverage.
His hair is short-cropped now, but he believes the new competition tour he founded will help the sport soar like never before. Until now, there was no organized tour, just scattered events with no coherent organization or method of determining a season champion.
“Within the sport, there’s always been a disconnected sort of feeling,” White said. “Then every four years when you wanted to go to the Olympics, all of sudden you have to do these other events that get you the points to (qualify for) the Olympics. It’s really hard (for viewers) to figure out where to tune in, where to watch what’s happening – and even just to follow along.”
White recalled a season when he was 16 years old and won every event he entered — halfpipe and slopestyle competitions — prompting an interviewer to ask him how it felt to be undefeated for an entire season and not be a world champion.
“That was a very clear picture of what was wrong,” White said. “What we’re trying to create is just like any other traditional sport, a centralized tour where you can come and see how everyone is doing and how it’s progressing.”
White pointed to alpine skiing’s World Cup, an organized ski racing tour held in dozens of major ski areas around the world with weekly stops — including Beaver Creek every December — beginning in October and ending in March. Overall and discipline champions are crowned at the end of each season.
Some events on that tour are nearly 100 years old. The Hahnenkamm downhill race in Kitzbuehel, Austria, annually attracts crowds in excess of 50,000.
“When you look at the sport of downhill skiing, they have a lot of legendary events, and there are big prize purses,” White said. “Not that it’s our sister sport, but it’s also on the mountain, one run over. Why are we not curating the same experience and capturing the attention of major brands? We want to create that same excitement for freeski and snowboarding.”
Aspen marks the first stop of the tour. The next event will be held in China in December, followed by Aspen again next February — immediately following the Winter Olympics in Italy — and Switzerland in March. The event this weekend will involve snowboard halfpipe only, but freeski halfpipe will be added when the tour resumes in December.
Qualifying runs take place all day Friday at Buttermilk with quarterfinals, semifinals and finals following on Saturday, beginning at 9 a.m. Peacock will broadcast live, and NBC will rebroadcast on March 29.
Merrill, Snöbahn’s primary owner, was grateful that White dropped in (yes, that’s a snowboard pun) to visit his investment and bring some attention to it on the way to Aspen.
“The awareness that Shaun can bring with his massive following, his credibility, his experience as the GOAT in the industry, I think it’s a credibility signifier for our customers,” Merrill said. “Shaun is not an investor/ambassador that just puts his name on the website. He really wants to roll up his sleeves; he really wants to shepherd in the next level of skier-snowboarder action sports participants. He really believes in our mission of inspiring a life of adventure.”
