OLYMPICS: Athletes set to shine at Olympics

Shaun White, Gretchen Bleiler, Rachael Flatt are names to look for

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BY SCOTT BAIR – sbair@nctimes.com | Posted: February 11, 2010 11:54 pm | No Comments Posted | Print

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Nathan Bilow Shaun White of Carlsbad holds up the gold medal he won at the men’s snowboard slopestyle at the Winter X Games 13 last January. (File photo by Nathan Bilow – Associated Press)

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Shaun White, the scrawny redhead from Carlsbad, is undoubtedly the most recognizable winter-sports athlete on the planet. And his popularity should only increase after this year’s Winter Olympics, which start Friday evening in Vancouver, British Columbia.

But White isn’t the only athlete with local ties and a chance to strike gold.

Part-time Carlsbad resident Gretchen Bleiler is the favorite to win the women’s snowboard halfpipe competition, and former Del Mar resident Rachael Flatt enters the women’s figure skating competition riding high after winning the U.S. championships last month.

“It’s going to be fantastic,” Flatt told reporters after her surprise victory. “I’m so excited.”

Bleiler reached favorite status after a solid qualifying run in the U.S. Grand Prix series and an X Games victory over a talented field in late January.

“This is great momentum for me,” Bleiler, a silver medalist at the 2006 Olympics in Turin, Italy, said in an X Games press conference. “Just knowing I’m capable of this is great confidence. Going to Vancouver with these girls, we’re going to try to sweep that podium.”

Medal sweeps is something White is already familiar with.

He began dominating snowboarding and skateboarding competitions at age 15 and has been a celebrity in action-sports circles ever since. When he won the gold medal in snowboarding at the 2006 Olympics, his celebrity reached the mainstream.

Fast-forward four years, and White’s popularity hasn’t waned. The quick-witted snow carver has remained an action-sports icon and a marketing dream, pushing everything from Burton snowboards to Target stores.

Increased wealth prompted a move from Carlsbad to Rancho Santa Fe, but it didn’t stifle his competitive drive. White continues to challenge himself with dangerous maneuvers on the halfpipe and is once again favored to win gold in the 2010 Olympics.

White has been feverishly working to perfect a new signature move, dubbed the Double McTwist 1260, in which he does two head-over-heels flips while rotating 3 1/2 times.

He has landed it several times, but suffered a frightening crash when he under-rotated the move during an X Games practice run. White landed on his head and emerged with a nasty facial abrasion, but that didn’t deter him. He attempted and successfully executed the maneuver in the competition and won X Games gold.

“I was pumped to get it done, to land the trick, to take first tonight and to actually walk away from that plant and still be going to the Olympics,” White said in a post-competition press conference.

The 17-year-old Flatt and fellow American skater Mirai Nagasu will face stiff competition from Korean Kim Yu-Na, Japan’s Mao Asada and others, but an upset is always a possibility in such a technical, often unforgiving sport.

“We need to embrace the challenge, and I’m sure we’re both up for it,” Flatt said after the U.S. championships. “We’re young and spirited.”

That could also easily define White, whose eccentric personality and media savvy made him a magnet for paparazzi during an extended victory tour after the 2006 Olympics. He was seen at Hollywood parties, had his picture on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine and enjoyed a brief flirtation with figure skater Sasha Cohen.

He knows popularity must be validated by performance in the Olympics, which White acknowledges as the biggest competition of his career.

“It’s just a monster event,” White said after the 2006 games. “It’s worldwide, and it was fun to be a part of it. It meant a lot to me now that I’m older to wear U.S. on my chest. It was heavy. It wasn’t like rolling into X Games on my own. I was representing the whole country.”

On that international stage, you could say that White and the others will be representing North County, too.

Posted in Olympics on Thursday, February 11, 2010 11:54 pm Updated: 12:01 am. | Tags: Top, Nct, Sports, Olympics,

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