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Shaun White eyes his longest break from snowboard contests

By Nick ZaccardiNov 12, 2018, 4:37 PM EST
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Shaun White said he has no plans to compete in snowboarding this season, which would mark the first time he goes a full year without entering a contest.

“I normally take every season after the Olympics off to clear my head,” White said in a statement via his team. “This time around I’ll be filling my time with skateboarding.”

White said in July that he would lighten his snowboard schedule as he returns to skateboarding competition. The triple Olympic halfpipe champion is considering a Tokyo 2020 run in the new Summer Olympic sport.

White entered his first skateboard contest in years in September and called his performance “pretty terrible,” but not surprising given it was his first-ever bowl event.

White earned five X Games skateboard medals between 2005 and 2011, but all of those came in vert, which is not on the Olympic program.

“Honestly, I am here to see how things go,” White said at the September event in Marseille, according to Agence France-Presse. “I haven’t made a decision either way [on 2020], I just figured, want to have some fun, skateboard, come to France and then hopefully make a decision come new year if I’m really going to go for it or not.”

As for snowboarding, White has typically eased off in post-Olympic years. In 2010-11 and 2014-15, his only contest was the Winter X Games, according to World Snowboarding, whose results show that White’s longest break from contests was 11 months.

White has said he would like to go for a fifth Winter Games in Beijing in 2022. He would be 35, older than any previous Olympic snowboarding champion. He’s already the oldest halfpipe medalist.

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Chloe Kim lands trick never done in women’s halfpipe competition

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By Nick ZaccardiOct 15, 2018, 11:45 AM EST
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Chloe Kim hasn’t competed in seven months — and the new season doesn’t start in earnest for another two — but she just threw a trick that no woman has ever done in competition.

Kim, in a video shared on her social media Sunday, landed a frontside double cork 1080, according to the International Ski Federation, training in Switzerland.

It’s another first for the 18-year-old who figures to rule the sport for years to come.

In PyeongChang, Kim became the youngest female Olympic snowboarding gold medalist with the first back-to-back 1080s in an Olympic women’s contest. Shaun White was the first man to do it, en route to gold at the 2006 Torino Games.

That was already a signature of Kim’s run, as she became the first woman to land back-to-back 1080s in any contest in February 2016, scoring 100 points.

The double cork 1080 was the must-have trick for the men leading into the Vancouver 2010 Winter Games. That was also won by White, with back-to-back double cork 1080s before his victory-lap run that had the “Tomahawk,” the double McTwist 1260 named after a 30-ounce T-bone steak he had recently devoured.

Last season, Kim became the first halfpipe rider to sweep the Olympics, X Games and U.S. Open in one winter.

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Katie Ledecky, Chloe Kim among Olympians on most marketable athletes list

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By Nick ZaccardiSep 7, 2018, 8:00 AM EST
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Reno-Tahoe drops 2030 Winter Olympic bid Shaun White eyes his longest break from snowboard contests Karen Chen out of Grand Prix Series

Katie Ledecky is the world’s ninth most marketable athlete for the next three years, according to Great Britain’s SportsPro magazine.

The magazine published its full list of the 50 most marketable athletes through summer 2021 on Friday. It’s based on value for money, age, home market, charisma, willingness to be marketed and crossover appeal.

No. 1 is Paul Pogba, the Manchester United star who just won the World Cup with France. He’s followed by 2012 Olympic boxing champion and current world heavyweight champ Anthony Joshua of Great Britain, last year’s No. 1, and French teammate Kylian Mbappé of Paris Saint-Germain, who didn’t make the top 50 last year.

Other Olympians or Olympic hopefuls high on the list: Tennis player Alexander Zverev of Germany (No. 4), Golden State Warriors guard Stephen Curry (No. 5), snowboarding gold medalist Chloe Kim (No. 7), gymnast Simone Biles (No. 15), Alpine skier Mikaela Shiffrin (No. 23), tennis player Naomi Osaka of Japan (No. 27), British swimmer Adam Peaty (No. 38) and British sprinter Dina Asher-Smith (No. 47)

Olympians to be named No. 1 before Joshua were Canadian tennis player Eugenie Bouchard in 2015, Brazilian soccer star Neymar in 2012 and 2013, Usain Bolt in 2011 and LeBron James in 2010, the first year of the rankings.

Cristiano Ronaldo and Lionel Messi were left off last year’s list because they reached a long-cemented commercial peak, SportsPro said. They were also not on this year’s list. Neither was James and Serena Williams.

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