This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2007, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.
Shaun White doesn't so much sit for interviews as riff from one topic to another, his mind heading in as many different directions as his hair, which looks like it hasn't been cut since the 2006 Olympics.
In town Thursday for the AST Dew Tour, White bounced from his favorite YouTube videos to sushi fights with friends to go-kart battles on his 21st birthday to crazy soccer coaches to ridiculous room service requests.
"I like to party,'' White said.
All of which serves as diversion from the fact that White, the Olympic snowboarding gold medalist and crossover action sports star, is on an unprecedented run this summer as a skateboarder.
He arrived in Salt Lake City having won vert at the three previous Dew Tour stops plus gold at the X Games. With the Olympics three years away, White has been able to turn his full attention to skateboarding and the victories have followed.
In fact, White is able to transfer his style from one half pipe to another. He qualified fifth in the vert prelims Thursday, but was the only skater to land a 720, which he followed with a frontside rodeo stalefish.
"Shaun comes in with all the spins, so it's kind of hard to beat that with technical skating consistently," Bucky Lasek said. As for White's arrival as a skateboarder, Lasek said, "He brings a lot of hype to the sport."
As opposed to Pierre-Luc Gagnon's background as a street skater, White's background came as a snowboarder. That's a good thing, according to Gagnon, the top qualifier for Sunday's finals.
"Skateboarding's not about doing the same thing that everyone's doing,'' Gagnon said. "It's about having your own signature moves and own style."
White was already a snowboarding star when he started entering skateboarding competitions in 2003. He grew up in Carlsbad, Calif., one of the sport's hotbeds, and found sanity from snowboarding at the famous Encinitas YMCA.
"I still do both sports,'' White said, "because I never just want to do one thing because I'll get over it, and I know it."
But White wasn't able to focus on skateboarding until this summer. He cut short his 2005 season to head to New Zealand and start training for the Olympics. After winning gold in Turin, Italy, White was burned out when it was time to start skateboarding again.
He finished dead last at one Dew Tour event, then won the next one, and took the rest of 2006 off. A year later, White is staring at the possibility of sweeping all five Dew Tour events to go with an X Games victory.
"Can we just sum it up with a boo-ya?" said White, who's trying not to look ahead. "If you try to eat the whole elephant at once, it's not going to be easy."
Most remarkable is the disadvantage White faces as a pro skateboarder considering he's snowboarding from November through April.
"My whole winter season those guys go to the ramps every single day while I'm gone,'' White said. "And it's terrible because I know it in the back of my head."
White has the chance to make history as the first skateboarder to land a 1080 - he said Thursday it'll happen at a best trick contest - and could have the chance to win the first Olympic skateboarding gold medal if the sport is added in 2012.
Asked about that prospect, White thought about spending 2009 training for the Vancouver Olympics and coming back in 2011 to train for London. "This is all going to be gone,'' he said, pointing to his mess of red hair.
"Can we just sum it up with a boo-ya? If you try to eat the whole elephant at once, it's not going to be easy."
SHAUN WHITE
On the prospect of sweeping all five Dew Tour events
Today's events: Opens to public at 2 p.m.; BMX vert finals 4 p.m.; BMX dirt finals 6:30 p.m. TV: USA, 10 p.m. (tape)