Snowboarding god Shaun White woke up Sunday morning and realized he was in the Olympics. Awesome. After falling on his first run, he got himself stoked before his second qualifying run. "I got all Olympic-y. I got that out of the way."
In dramatic fashion, "The Flying Tomato" came from behind - in fact, it took him until the second wave to qualify for the finals. He was the overwhelming favorite to win and the other riders had all but conceded the win to the red-haired god before they even arrived at Torino. And once in the finals of the men's snowboarding competition, Shaun didn't disappoint as he easily beat teammate Danny Kass who took the silver and Markuu Koski of Finland who nabbed the bronze.
The 19-year-old shredding star with the flaming red hair said he stood at the top of the halfpipe on Sunday before his first qualifying run and basically freaked out. "I think we all saw my first run. I didn't deal with it too well," Shaun said.
"I was dropping in and it just hit me, 'Wow, we're at the Olympics.' I never really felt that before. I was standing up there and looking at the crowd, not even looking at the halfpipe walls. Looking around like, 'Wow, gnarly.' "
Later at the news conference, The flying tomato got cocky again and expressed interest in hooking up with figure skater Sasha Cohen. "I'm hoping Sasha Cohen dates gold medalists," White said. Then he tried out some possible pick-up lines: "You do a 1080? Yeah, so do I."
Check out more about Shaun at his Olympic profile. (great video clips too)
