- 14 hours ago
For all sports fans who don't follow snowboarding, this will be the strangest beef ever.
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00:00Sean White became the face of a sport
00:02that did not want to be represented by him.
00:06It's more complicated than that though,
00:09largely because snowboarding's ethos
00:11is more complex than that of your average sport.
00:14And when it comes to beef, this one's pretty unique.
00:19It's Sean White versus snowboarding.
00:26For well over a decade,
00:28Sean White seemed inescapable.
00:31He had his own video game.
00:33He had a clothing line at Target.
00:35He was on magazine covers,
00:37including this one for Rolling Stone
00:39that famously made a bold but fitting claim.
00:44Known primarily for a seasonal sport,
00:47White was everywhere.
00:49Big smile, great hair, he was a marketer's dream.
00:53This is how it had been since day one.
00:57At seven years old, White was literally sponsored
01:01before knowing what sponsored meant.
01:03He turned pro in snowboarding at 13,
01:06started winning major events before he could legally drive,
01:10and showed up at the perfect time for a sport
01:12entering the mainstream.
01:14White became a lens for sports fans to see snowboarding through.
01:19He was an entry point to something fun, exciting, universally recognized as cool.
01:27His emergence in the early aughts came at a pivotal time for snowboarding,
01:32which, considering its origin only dates back to the 1970s, was still a very young sport.
01:39And because of White, it soon found itself at a unique inflection point that ran counter to its roots.
01:46So, first off, there is a key distinction between snowboarding and most other competitive sports.
01:54It did not start as a sport.
01:57It had maybe the purest origin possible.
02:00Sherm Poppin, a father in Muskegon, Michigan, invented something to make his kids happy at Christmas.
02:07He called it the Snurfer.
02:10Like the pogo stick or a slip and slide, it was designed for fun and leisure.
02:16But as its popularity grew worldwide, people started snurfing in new directions.
02:24Jake Burton Carpenter, founder of the now iconic brand Burton,
02:28slapped some bindings on a Snurfer and snowboarding began to take shape.
02:33But even as the first competitions began popping up, fun was the name of the game.
02:39Riders bonded, they brought a camaraderie to events, celebrating the wins of others like they'd won themselves.
02:46When their pole-clutching cousins nimbied snowboarding off of their mountains,
02:51the community embraced their role as outsiders.
02:55This was a sport for outlaws.
02:57But as snowboarding's popularity boomed through the 80s and 90s, resorts opened their doors.
03:03And in 1998, those outlaws, bizarrely enough, became Olympians.
03:09This timeline, I think, is extremely crucial.
03:12Snowboarding became an Olympic sport just 21 years after Burton put bindings on a board for the first time.
03:19It reached the uppermost echelon of sports, while it was still learning how to be a sport.
03:25We've become used to sports that are uncompromising.
03:29Greatness requires sacrifice, it justifies unholy levels of commitment.
03:34And most importantly, it's not enough just to want to win.
03:37You need to be terrified of losing, because that's the rule.
03:41If you want to win, then you want everyone else to lose.
03:46And at snowboarding's core, the passion to be great was there among competitors,
03:51but they championed this new sport by championing each other.
03:55They wanted to win, but just as importantly, they wanted to have fun, even if they lost.
04:02That's where the sport remained when a young Sean White showed up.
04:07In 2001, 2002, he began making his mark on the scene.
04:12In competition, that came naturally to him.
04:15He was traveling the world, winning events, sharing podiums with riders twice his age.
04:22That age difference complicated things away from the mountain.
04:27While his competitors partied, White traveled with his mom and did his homework.
04:32He felt like he was participating from the outside.
04:36An outsider to a sport propelled by outsiders.
04:41Now, if he wanted to feel like more of a part of it, White didn't make that easy.
04:46On the Bombhole podcast in 2023, he recounted a competition early in his career.
04:5215 years old, in Japan, $50,000 up for grabs, and all of his competition nursing hangovers so bad
05:00that they wanted to collectively take it easy and split the pot.
05:04But White and his family went all the way to Japan to win.
05:09That's the point, right?
05:10He also had a few new tricks in his back pocket.
05:13So White told his competition that he wasn't going to take it easy.
05:17He wanted to win.
05:19And he did.
05:20In 2023, he admitted that was a bittersweet moment for a kid who wanted to fit in.
05:27Alienating himself even further in the name of winning.
05:31But he was just getting started.
05:34Winter X Games, no one could beat him.
05:37First Olympics in 2006, gold medal.
05:41Even as a skateboarder, gold in 2007 at the X Games.
05:44White went on an unstoppable run, where basically the only snowboarding events he didn't win were because he didn't compete
05:52in them.
05:53His peers compared White to a robot, programmed with one simple goal.
05:58Beat everyone.
05:59So how do you topple that which appears untoppleable?
06:04In a more competitive sport, one might opt to pay someone to smash White's knee with a wrench.
06:09But in snowboarding, White's peers looked to best him through the power of friendship.
06:15This might be a first in beef history.
06:18Meet the Friends Crew.
06:20Spelling here of utmost importance.
06:23This was a collection of riders, roughly around the same age as White, who vocally honored the core spirit of
06:29snowboarding.
06:30With the sport gaining popularity year after year, their aim was to lift each other up and have fun doing
06:37it.
06:37Win or lose.
06:39That's not to say they didn't care about winning, but the logic surrounding competitions was that you're only competing with
06:46yourself.
06:47Your score is your score, and no one else's performance impacts that.
06:52Now, what about a certain someone's score that kept being higher than everyone else's?
06:58A red-headed elephant was always in the room with the Friends Crew.
07:02And they were comfortable discussing the realities of the situation.
07:06One of those realities was that a rivalry with White was forming.
07:11Even if that rivalry was rooted in differing views on how to approach competition.
07:16White sounded fairly dismissive of what his peers were doing.
07:21While his official comment was an eloquent whatever, some alleged actions carry a different sentiment.
07:28The story goes that in 2007, Kevin Pierce of the Friends Crew beat White at the Japan Open.
07:36While everyone else celebrated, the runner-up found a fire extinguisher and unloaded it in his competitors' hotel rooms.
07:43Even more over the top, allegedly, Pierce was living with White at the time, and White asked his mom back
07:50in the States to throw out all of Pierce's belongings.
07:54Among which was stacks of prize money.
07:57These accusations came out well after the fact in the 2013 documentary, The Crash Reel.
08:03Once they were in the open, White quickly deflected them, saying Pierce had never even lived with him.
08:10All of it was ridiculous.
08:12True or not, this opened the doors for some long-shelved beef to emerge.
08:17After Japan, Pierce continued on a run of success through 2007.
08:23That carried into 2008, particularly at events that fell within a seasonal circuit called Ticket to Ride.
08:31Boiled down, throughout the snowboarding season, there were regularly scheduled events that tied back to this competition.
08:38At the end of the season, your top five scores from these Ticket to Ride events would be divided by
08:44five,
08:44and whoever had the highest score would be crowned champion and get a big check.
08:49If you didn't make it to five events, too bad.
08:51Still divided by five, you should have snowboarded more.
08:54And the plan was to name the champion after the US Open, the final major stop within Ticket to Ride.
09:01Once it was time for the US Open, White showed up, he crushed it, won some more prizes, go figure.
09:07But if anyone made it to the end of this Sean-centric article,
09:11you'd learn that Pierce hung on to win the Ticket to Ride championship.
09:16You'd think, given the whole scoring system, this would be fairly straightforward.
09:21Well, five years after the fact, White shared the behind-the-scenes drama.
09:26The US Open was only White's fourth qualifying event of the circuit.
09:31So, given the Ticket to Ride rules, his four scores were divided by five, leaving him well behind Pierce.
09:38However, there was another event in Europe that fell within the TTR schedule.
09:44White figured he'd go win that and it would qualify as his fifth event.
09:48The issue was, organizers wanted to crown the champion at the US Open due to it having the greatest publicity
09:54of any event.
09:55White explained at length how he told the organizers that this wasn't fair.
10:01He could still win in Europe.
10:03They were all gathered around and Pierce was fined to accept a prize that in White's eyes hadn't been earned
10:09yet.
10:09Apparently, organizers even offered White 50k after the Europe event, but wanted to name Pierce champion that day.
10:17And again, at this time, this was all written as,
10:20White won the US Open and, oh, by the way, Pierce was named champion of this other thing.
10:25But the title stood for Pierce and the exposure picked up.
10:30Other friends stacked strong finishes as well.
10:33And with an impressive 2008, Pierce was even referenced at the start of an article about White budding rivalry in
10:41Focus.
10:42He was coming on at the perfect time with the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver looming.
10:49Whether fueled by this under-the-radar beef or purely embracing his own spirit, White kicked his competitive drive into
10:58another gear.
10:59This halfpipe carried an unbelievable level of secrecy.
11:04Rumors even swirled of White's girlfriend at the time needing to sign an NDA.
11:09He sought focus.
11:11No distractions from press or competitors.
11:14And the seclusion meant no one knew the tricks White looked to perfect.
11:18This halfpipe was his and his alone.
11:22A home base for White's quest for domination.
11:25Meanwhile, Pierce's status had soared to the point where he too had a sponsor-built pipe.
11:31One that offered similar focus, but for Pierce, it served as a spot to bring all the Friends crew out
11:37to hone their craft together.
11:40Pushing each other in order to push the sport.
11:42Or pushing each other to beat White.
11:46During that lead-up to Vancouver 2010, the Friends crew and the snowboarding world took a hit that significantly impacted
11:54this beef.
11:55On December 31st, 2009, Kevin Pierce came down hard during a training run.
12:01Without time to brace, his head took the bulk of the force.
12:04Surrounded by Friends, he was rushed off in critical condition, having suffered a traumatic brain injury.
12:11This ultimately ended Pierce's professional snowboarding career.
12:16It also served as the entry point to his documentary, The Crash Reel, which chronicled his career and recovery.
12:22It's also how the Friends' not-so-warm relationship with Shawn first came to light and forced White to respond.
12:30To his credit, White recalled the better times.
12:34They'd been close once, and it would have been impossible for Pierce's injury not to weigh on White.
12:39But that was preceded by White questioning Pierce's talent before the crash.
12:46Mind you, earlier in this same interview, he'd said he hadn't seen the documentary yet.
12:51He remained critical of the entire Friends collective.
12:55And even after a decade at the top of the sport, White remained with a sense of being on the
13:02outside looking in.
13:03On one hand, it's famously lonely at the top.
13:07On the other, superstar athletes have been known to use any perceived slight for motivation.
13:13And White clearly kept receipts.
13:16He referenced a New York Times article from 2009 disagreeing with the portrayal of him.
13:22But this quote, buried within a sea of unedited quotes, is most revealing.
13:28It shows White's belief that his credentials were being questioned.
13:33He may have misspoke, or he may have misunderstood what the Friends crew sought by repping the grassroots badge.
13:42It was simply about having fun, bringing people together, and sharing the culture of the sport
13:47so riders can enjoy it even if they don't win.
13:50And that last part, White couldn't grasp.
13:54Frankly, it seems hard to grasp for anyone who wasn't part of it.
13:58It's a beautiful idea, but it flies in the face of how we consider competition.
14:04But that's why White's approach flew in the face of the snowboarding world.
14:09No one else was saying this stuff.
14:12And no one had dethroned him.
14:15He'd taken home a second straight gold at those Vancouver games, then looked set up to three-peat
14:22on the halfpipe in 2014, plus a potential fourth gold medal thanks to the inclusion of Slopestyle for the first
14:29time.
14:30But at the games in Sochi, things changed.
14:33First, questionable course conditions led to White dropping out of Slopestyle.
14:39Multiple Canadian snowboarders leapt at their chance to call him out, claiming White's fear wasn't of injury, but of losing.
14:48When fellow American Sage Kotzenberg won gold, he honored the grassroots mission.
14:54And in the halfpipe, things only got worse for White.
14:58He was the favorite to win gold after learning a new trick invented by Iori Podlochkov, aka iPod.
15:06But when it came to the competition, White couldn't stick the trick.
15:10iPod could.
15:12And as if the universe wanted to send a message about Father Time being undefeated,
15:17White was kept entirely off the podium by a pair of teenagers.
15:21The most consistent force in snowboarding proved to be mortal.
15:26And while his peers didn't directly celebrate White's defeat, they did point to this being a major moment for snowboarding.
15:34White had dominated not just the events, but all the headlines.
15:38Everything was contextualized through him.
15:41And for everyone competing not named Sean White, they felt as though if White was the entry point to snowboarding,
15:48then the point was missed.
15:50In the eyes of Friends crew member Danny Davis, White couldn't represent snowboarding because he was bigger than the sport
15:58itself.
15:59And it wasn't just the Friends crew.
16:01It wasn't just snowboarders.
16:03Olympic skier Gus Kenworthy pointed out how White's status impacted his relationship to snowboarding and his peers.
16:10White's career was far from over, but these admissions began changing the narrative around him.
16:17Would it have been so extreme had he won another medal or two in 2014?
16:22Certainly not.
16:23But with how widespread these feelings had become, it was only a matter of time.
16:28He went on to pick up his third Olympic gold in 2018.
16:32But that only created a larger stage for White to have to address allegations of sexual harassment from a lawsuit
16:38that was settled out of court in 2016.
16:41And he addressed them fairly poorly, eventually apologizing for his response, but not his alleged actions.
16:49White made it to one final Winter Olympics and finished without a medal, then hung it up as a pro.
16:55The beef had long been done by that point.
16:58And although it's fittingly one of the chillest beefs that sports has ever seen, there's nothing quite like it.
17:05Sean White became a global superstar in a sport that most people think about only once every four years.
17:13Yet, he still felt like an outsider.
17:16Ask White's peers and they'd tell you that was his own doing.
17:20If he had to represent the rest of snowboarders, they wished he could also be a champion of what the
17:26sport meant to everyone else.
17:28Everyone who snowboards has something in common.
17:31There's a bond, a passion for fun, and White's fellow Olympians wished he'd showcased that.
17:39The peace to snowboarding that makes it unique among sports.
17:43White has reclaimed some of that grassroots mentality in retirement.
17:48And as time goes on, who's to say that the most recognizable face the sport has ever seen won't learn
17:55to be the champion everyone wished he'd been all along.
17:57But whatever the future has in store, it'll always be wild to consider a sport having beef with its very
18:06own superstar.
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