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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Posted date: 2/8/2010

Market Stabilization Brings Renewed Interest in High-End Homes

REAL ESTATE: Building Plans for Upscale Properties Begin to Gain Momentum

The market for high-end homes costing more than $800,000 has slipped since the end of the housing boom, but builders say there are increasing signs of a turnaround.

“The market in my mind has stabilized,” said longtime San Diego builder Bill Davidson, president of Davidson Communities. “It is not falling like it was last year, and that is very important. No one wants to buy a house when they think the market is falling.”

With prices stabilizing, Davidson has begun to prepare for a real estate rebound.

“We are actively trying to buy more land now because we can price our homes profitably,” he said.

His company has upscale production homes under construction in La Costa and Del Sur in North County. They range in price from the $700,000s to more than $1 million. Tight credit has made it more difficult for upper-end buyers to secure loans, however. Conditions were much different just a few years ago, when loan underwriting standards were looser and customers bought big homes “with all of the gadgets and luxuries that we could pile on,” Davidson said. Since the recession hit, high-end buyers have been seeking smaller, simpler dwellings.

At McCullough-Ames Development Inc., Principal Monty McCullough typically builds custom $1 million, estate-style homes on 1-acre lots. Most of the firm’s recent projects are in North County, near the coast and along the state Route 56 corridor, between the Del Mar area and Poway. Even these buyers are looking for ways to stretch a dollar. McCullough presses his subcontractors for the best prices and passes the savings along to customers.

“Everybody has been hit by the recession,” he said. “… I felt my business starting to tail off by the summer and fall of 2004. Since the spring of 2009 we have built 15 homes, under contract or just finished.”

Scaling Back On Size

Like Davidson, McCullough said his customers are downsizing a bit.

“The average home is right at or under 5,000 square feet,” he said. Not long ago, 6,000-square-foot to 9,000-square-foot homes were common in the custom market.

Custom builder Terry Wardell of Wardell Builders Inc. estimates that the size of the upper-end market had declined by about 50 percent from its peak. Wardell builds most of his homes in La Jolla, Del Mar, Rancho Santa Fe, Point Loma and Mission Hills.

“I think 2010 will be stronger than 2009, but it is still going to stay pretty flat,” he said. “Construction prices probably are 25 percent off their peak.”

Analyst Russ Valone, president and CEO of the MarketPointe Realty Advisors research firm, has been tracking $800,000-plus home sales. In 2005, such homes made up 49 percent of the detached housing market here. In 2006, the percentage was 44 percent. Last year, the share was down to just 20 percent.

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