Vail - It's a safe bet Hef never saw this one coming. Then again, neither did Shaun White. Consider the scenario: Hugh Hefner, the face and founder of Playboy Enterprises Inc.
, found himself alone in his renowned Los Angeles mansion for the first half of last week, while a skinny, redheaded 20-year-old swooped in on his three girlfriends like a masked ninja on a mission in Vail. What were the odds? "That's been my plan since I was like 10," White joked.
"I mean, it's always cool to meet new people, but it's crazy." White, the reigning Olympic gold medalist in snowboard superpipe, uses that word liberally these days. Crazy.
It's about as close as he can get to an explanation for his enduring celebrity a full 12 months after Olympic glory. Oh, sure, the planet's pre-eminent rider has enjoyed his share of stardom since Jake Burton began sponsoring him at age 6. But that was primarily - almost exclusively - among snowboarders.
These days, White and his trademark flowing red mane have transcended the sport to achieve bona fide celebrity status at almost every level. Beyond the traditional post-Olympic, Leno-Letterman talk-show circuit, White became the first snowboarder to make the cover of Sports Illustrated last year and can be found on the jacket of Outside magazine this month. It's a virtual lock he'll go down in history as the only snowboarder ever featured on the cover of Rolling Stone.
"There will never be another Shaun White," said Jack Ridenour, a snowboarding chef who sought White's autograph while working at Vail's Wildwood Pavilion last Wednesday. "He's like Michael Jordan or John Elway - there's only one." Such high praise is virtually universal among an adoring public that has watched White grow up at the Winter X Games and establish a new athletic archetype at the Winter Olympics last year.
The shoulder-length, bed-head red hair and slight frame cut the figure of a neighbor's kid from down the block, not an otherworldly athlete who reportedly pulled in a $6 million income while winning all 11 snowboard contests he entered last season. He signed another million-dollar endorsement deal with Red Bull energy drink after making bigger news than the winners by finishing second and third in the two contests he entered at Winter X in Aspen two weeks ago. "I thought things had gone pretty far.
Then I did the Olympics and it just got crazy," White said. "At X Games the fans were crazy the year before, but this year I had to throw my gloves and my goggles away just to get out of there. The crowd would go after my stuff and I was like, 'Later!
"' Since he grabbed the gold in Turin one year ago this week, Lindsay Lohan, Al Gore and Montel Williams all have been spotted rolling with "Se or Blanco," the nickname he prefers to the media-cultivated "Flying Tomato." And last week in Vail, White confirmed he would hit the big time when he lined up a snowboarding date with Hef's ladies - Holly Madison, Bridget Marquardt and Kendra Wilkinson - for a segment on the E! channel's highest-rated show, "The Girls Next Door.
" "He's an icon," said Wilkinson, 21, who first met White at last year's ESPY awards, where he was named Best U.S. Olympian and Best Male Action Sports Athlete.
"I walked out of the bathroom and he was the first person I saw and I was like, 'Shaun - it's my dream to go snowboard with you!"' "I don't think I was really familiar with the show yet," he said. "I just saw this cute blond yelling my name, and I was like, 'Yes!
I've made it."' To core riders, the setting of White shredding circles around a trio of board bunnies might have seemed slightly silly ("I thought they were going to have the fur coats and the fur boots and the whole deal," White confessed). But while first-timers Madison, 27, and Marquardt, 33, spent their day on the "bunny" hill with Vail instructors Chris Sandowski and Dave Wilson, the more-experienced Wilkinson picked up pointers in the terrain park from White and instructor Tim Stuart, eventually mastering rail slides on the wider "fun box.
" In the snowboarding industry, the segment that is expected to air in late March or early April is viewed as an opportunity to maximize White's celebrity among a portion of the market that might otherwise go overlooked. "The majority of their viewership is female, so for women and snowboarding it's a really important piece," Burton spokeswoman Dawn De La Fuente said. "We wanted to present the ideal snowboarding experience, and to see three lovely ladies getting out there on the mountain, two of them starting from scratch, is really great.
" Surprisingly, snowboarding's statistics are sagging for the first time in history. A survey by the National Sporting Goods Association indicates the number of snowboarders in the U.S.
sank from 6.6 million to 6 million from 2004 to 2005, the last year for which statistics are available. SnowSports Industries America says snowboard sales dropped for the first time ever over the same period.
But given his increasing fame, it's possible - if not probable - that the statistics, like the rest of the snowboarding world, simply haven't caught up to White. "The Rolling Stone cover was probably the highlight of everything so far," White said. "That's some Led Zeppelin stuff right there.
That's all-time." Just another reminder that it really is Shaun White's world. You just live here.
All contents Copyright 2007 The Denver Post or other copyright holders. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed for any commercial purpose.
News RSS