“It Was Really Difficult”: Snowboarding Legend Shaun White Had a Tough Time Transitioning From Solo Sport to a Music Band

Shaun White, the retired snowboarding legend is a three-time Olympic gold medallist and has a World record for the most golds in X games. Being a sensation began for him as a child and there has been no looking back since then. He has shown his prowess in snowboarding, music, acting, and business, leaving one to question whether there is anything Shaun would find difficult to do.

Of course, there is something the multi-talented personality had trouble with. It is well-known that Shaun loves music as much as he loves snowboarding and that he is a part of the band that took off in 2012. It came as a surprise to the solo rider that it was challenging to play a team-based role in his band, ‘The Bad Things.’

Shaun White picks up his guitar

The Sochi debacle in 2014 found him off the podium for the first time in an Olympic competition. He said “Sochi is like this scar on my face. I’ll have it for the rest of my life.” 

The snowboarding icon is full of surprises. After such a failure, one would work on different strategies, and work on the past mistakes, but Shaun does none of that. Instead, he picks up his guitar.

White valued the band in the same way that he valued snowboarding. It would be a huge misunderstanding if one thought that Shaun was playing music to forget his Sochi disaster. He said, “I drop everything for these guys,” “[Photo] shoots, practice, anything I need to do. Because it’s a very serious thing for us.”

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However, traveling with five other artists became tough in ways White had not imagined. “In snowboarding, it was like, ‘When do you want to practice? What contest do you want to do? What outfit are you going to wear?’ ” But playing in a band, by contrast, is “a team sport,” he said. “It was really difficult.” It was quite a changeover for the snowboarding pro to think more of  ‘we’ and less of ‘I’. It was not always feasible to wield the same amount of aggression as a snowboarder.

Music is a sign to Shaun

The ‘Flying Tomato’ began playing the guitar as a youngster after winning a snowboarding competition. The big prize was a yellow Fender Stratocaster—not a display trophy, but an operating instrument that sparked his musical obsession.  

Notably, Shaun has a strange belief. “I have a weird thing where if I play the song and I do well that’s a good sign and I keep the song in rotation. But as soon as I don’t, I just cut it.” He shared in an interview in 2018 when he was going for his third gold medal at Winter Olympics. It also expresses his passion for music and serves as an inspiration.

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