The last run: White says Olympics will be his final contest
Associated PressZHANGJIAKOU, China — This really is it for Shaun White. I kind of reflected on things I’ve done and looked at the sun going down and went, ‘Wow, next time I’m here, I won’t be stressed about learning tricks or worried about some competition thing.’” White traditionally has taken a break for a season, sometimes two seasons, in the aftermath of an Olympics, so to hear him say he’d be checking out for good after Beijing was not a big shock. “And it’s all about visualizing and making that happen the ‘day of.’” Though he refused to take it off the table, those runs probably will not include a triple cork — the three-flip trick that Ayumu Hirano of Japan has landed twice in competition this season, but has not won with, because he could not link another trick to it. In 2010, he landed his patented Double McTwist 1260 — “The Tomahawk,” he calls it — in a victory lap in Vancouver; it’s a trick that’s still relevant today. “And as long as you can go out there and put down your best, and lay it out there, then you can walk away, and in your mind, be good with that.” White says he’s toggling between trying to enjoy every moment of the last big contest week of his life and knowing there is work to do when the halfpipe opens for training Sunday.