Shaun White to bring Air + Style event to Rose Bowl in February

This could be called the X Games crossed with the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival.

“That’s a fair comparison,” Shaun White was saying during a phone conversation on Thursday afternoon.

The action sports icon and two-time Olympic gold medalist was wearing his owner/management hat in regard to his upcoming Air + Style event. White and his partners will be bringing the two-day event to the Rose Bowl from Feb. 21-22, the first time it will be held in the United States.

Beyond sports and live music, there will be components of fashion, art, lifestyle trends and tech in the “gathering of youth culture,” and essentially whatever else comes from White’s innovative mind.

“If you really look at it, this represents a fair portrayal of my life. I’ve been competing since I was a kid at events all over the world,” White said. “I’ve always loved music. I play guitar in a band [Bad Things] and to link the two together and to put on this big event, it’s pretty huge for me.

“Not only as an owner of the event but as a fan of music and festivals and competing.”

White will not be competing at the Rose Bowl, at least in an official capacity. The fields will consist of 16 snowboarders and 16 freestyle skiers, and the Rose Bowl event is the third stop on the Air + Style tour, the others in Beijing and Innsbruck, Austria.

He joked that it would be “lose-lose” if he were to compete.

“If I win my own event, it’s a little fishy. If I lose, it looks even worse,” White said, laughing.

Along with White, scheduled to be at the official news conference launching the event today were U.S. Olympians Joss Christensen, Bobby Brown and Canadian Olympian Mark McMorris. White said that Sage Kotsenburg, the winner of the first-ever Olympic gold medal in men’s slopestyle at the Winter Games in Sochi, Russia, had also signed on for the event.

The Rose Bowl was an obvious choice for the event.

“I feel like this was the right place to do it,” White said. “We entertained some different areas, but I remember thinking, Wow, the Rose Bowl is so close to my home. I went there for a U2 concert and it was just full-on blow out.”

The focal point will be a 16-story high, 500-foot-long ramp via a jump takeoff of 10 feet tall and a 40-foot wide landing zone, designed by Snow Park Technologies, according to the news release. Tickets were to go on sale today, via Ticketmaster.

“If you can just imagine standing at the top of this thing and coming down … I don’t think anyone in the area in L.A. is going to be able to miss it, it’s so large,” White said. “We have photos of it at the Bird’s Nest [in Beijing] and it’s almost peeking out at the top of it.”