By Rory Carroll
(Reuters) – Snowboarding great Shaun White brought the once outsider sport into the mainstream as a competitor and is now looking to carve a path for the next generation of professional riders with the launch of his Snow League.
The inaugural season kicks off with a halfpipe competition from March 7-8 in Aspen, where 36 athletes including reigning Olympic champion Ayumu Hirano of Japan, will begin a quest to be crowned the first-ever Snow League world champions.
White, a three-time Olympic gold medallist who hung up his board after the 2022 Beijing Games, said he is not done innovating in a sport that was often misunderstood and even ridiculed in its early days.
“I entered the sport in a crazy time period where a lot of snowboarders weren’t allowed on resorts and halfpipes were hand-dug by shovels,” White told Reuters.
“My goal was to bring about a professionalism and an athleticism that wasn’t really there before.
“What I did within my competitive career I’m hoping to lap with this next chapter. I want to leave the sport in a better place than I found it and usher in a new era for the next generation.”
The 38-year-old White has come far from his younger competition-obsessed days when fans nicknamed him the “flying tomato” for his long red locks, recruiting big name sponsors like INEOS Automotive, Marriott Bonvoy, Pacifico and Hublot for the league with a $1.6 million prize purse.
“It’s all coming together,” White said.
“We’ve got the biggest prize purse out there, the best athletes in the world, the most incredible resorts in the world.
“It’s coming to NBC and Peacock, Tiffany & Co. is making our trophies, we have all these incredible sponsors and we have a plan to grow.”
Male and female athletes will compete to accumulate points based on their results from each event, which will be tallied together at the end of the season to crown the Snow League world champions.
White, who also runs a luxury snowboard and lifestyle company called Whitespace, said the biggest shift into the role of league founder has been the change in perspective.
“You stop really focusing on ‘Me’ and ‘I’ and instead focus on ‘We’ and ‘Us’,” he said.
“How do I change this for everybody? How do I bring everyone with me? Maybe it’s just the age talking,” he said with a smile.
After this weekend’s competition at Buttermilk in Aspen Snowmass, the globe-trotting circuit shifts to Beijing for a December 4-6 event at Yunding Secret Garden, where 16 freeskiers will join the roster for the remainder of the season.
After a break for the 2026 Olympics in Milano-Cortina, a third event will be held back in Aspen later in February. The season will conclude at the iconic LAAX halfpipe in Switzerland in March.
White said the action will only ramp up from there, with as many as 14 events in future seasons.
“We’re really going to do this right,” he said.
“I’m excited about the future.”
(Reporting by Rory Carroll in Los Angeles, additional reporting by Amy Tennery; Editing by Toby Davis)
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