Shaun White

Shaun White was born in San Diego in 1986 with a congenital heart defect, tetralogy of Fallot, and had two open-heart operations before he was one. He spent his early years riding the San Bernardino Mountains with his family, who stayed in a van in resort parking lots. He followed his older brother Jesse from skiing to snowboarding at six and had his first sponsor at seven. His skateboarding drew admirers early too: Tony Hawk befriended him as a nine-year-old at the Encinitas YMCA skate park and mentored him, and White turned pro in skateboarding at 16.

He medaled at the Winter X Games every year from 2002 through 2013, and at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin he became an Olympic champion. His first qualifying run scored only 37.7 and nearly put him out. He recovered, and in the final his 46.8 took the halfpipe gold over fellow American Danny Kass. His longstanding nickname was "the Flying Tomato," for his red hair. Rolling Stone wrote that year that "he used to embrace it, even wearing headbands with a flying-tomato logo, but he has grown tired of it." His sponsors over the years included Burton, Oakley, Target, Red Bull and HP, and Forbes estimated his 2008 endorsement income at $9 million. Ubisoft released Shaun White Snowboarding in 2008, followed by a sequel in 2009 and Shaun White Skateboarding in 2010.

At the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, his first run in the final, a 46.8, was enough to win gold. He took the second run anyway as a victory lap, finished it with the Double McTwist 1260 he called "The Tomahawk," and scored a record 48.4. Through 2013 he collected 18 Winter X Games medals, 13 of them gold. He finished fourth in 2014, won a third gold in 2018 with back-to-back 1440s on his final run (the 100th gold medal in U.S. Winter Olympic history), and retired after finishing fourth again in 2022, to a standing ovation on his last run.