One Hot ‘Tomato’

Shaun White anticipates a February sojourn to Italy and, of course, the little ritual that precedes most of his journeys.

He’ll plop into a first-class seat and arouse immediate suspicion.

The shoulder-length hair, the jeans and T-shirt, the young age ... this couldn’t possibly be the distinguished Mr. White, who has logged more than 100,000 miles this year alone.

“It happens all the time,” the itinerant snowboarder says, chuckling. “Sometimes they ask to see my ticket stub. It’s no big deal.”

Two weeks later, during the return trip to Los Angeles, flight attendants may not merely recognize White but request his autograph.

The 19-year-old from Carlsbad is perhaps the United States’ best hope to win the gold medal in the halfpipe competition during the Winter Olympics on Feb. 10-26 at Turin, Italy.

If successful, his soaring popularity will break the bounds of action sports. The “Flying Tomato,” he of long red locks and freckled skin, will become a household name and there will be even more opportunities for an athlete already earning seven figures through endorsements.

But don’t jump ahead, White pleads. He hasn’t even made the team yet. The first of three U.S. Snowboard Grand Prix events -- five competitions within the events will serve as Olympic qualifiers -- is underway this week at Breckenridge, Colo. White on Tuesday qualified first among 117 snowboarders for today’s finals in the first of two events at the venue. The second qualifier is at Mt. Bachelor in Oregon, on Jan. 5-8, and the third is at Mountain Creek, N.J., on Jan. 20-21.

“But I just know .... I’m going to be fired up,” White said.

At 15, he missed qualifying for the 2002 Winter Olympics by only three-tenths of a point.

He then watched as Ross Powers, Danny Kass and J.J. Thomas swept the gold, silver and bronze medals.

Their efforts in Salt Lake City sparked a snowboarding renaissance in the United States. The sport, which had only slowly begun to emerge from its unsavory past, was suddenly cool and wholesome.

Powers, Kass and Thomas, along with women’s gold medalist Kelly Clark, beamed during the medal ceremonies and afterward proclaimed the Olympic experience one they would cherish forever.

That’s what White now wants, saying, “It just means so much more to me because of the last Olympics and what a big deal it was, and just the fact that I wasn’t in it.”

*

Normality has returned to the White home during a lazy fall afternoon.

The scent of ocean lingers. “Shrek” is playing on the TV and the Flying Tomato, having spent several weeks practicing in New Zealand, is between winters.

His parents are in Park City, Utah, decorating his two new condominiums. His sister Kari stops in briefly. His brother Jesse, a team manager for Burton Snowboards, is working nearby.

The Whites are close-knit and down to earth. Shaun, the youngest, still lives with his parents in the two-story house he bought for the family two years ago -- it’s one of three houses he owns in the Carlsbad area.

Snowboarding is a family passion that became a way of life early for Shaun. He was sponsored by Burton at 7 and turned pro at 13 and his meteoric rise accompanied that of the sport. As he got better, so did the money.

After scoring a lucrative victory in Japan, he realized he had found his career.

“I had made my parents’ salaries, combined, with that contest and it was amazing to me at the time,” he says.

His stylish acrobatics sometimes surprised even him.

“It’s funny because I’ll be learning the tricks and I’ll be six feet out of the halfpipe, and once the contest starts that six feet will go to eight or 10 feet,” White says.

He hit it big in 2003 at the Winter X Games, edging Kass for the gold medal in the halfpipe and also claiming gold in slope-style, in which routines are performed on terrain-park features.

“He knows all the tricks and he’s really just an all-around great rider,” says Powers, 26, who also won the bronze medal during snowboarding’s Olympic debut at Nagano, Japan, in 1998.

The 2003 performance earned White, who is also an elite-level skateboarder, an ESPY as the year’s top action-sports athlete. It sits in his upstairs bedroom, in a glass case, along with other awards, trinkets and framed letters from fans.

“It’s my mom’s doing,” he says of the display, wanting instead to show off his electric guitar.

As proud as Cathy and Roger White may be of Shaun’s athletic and financial success, they’re just as delighted that he managed to graduate from high school this year, despite his whirlwind lifestyle.

Katy Heritage, his teacher at Carlsbad Seaside Academy, a Carlsbad Unified School District affiliate that accommodates mostly advanced pupils with special circumstances, recalls White as an “unassuming, goal-oriented” student who received mostly A’s and Bs.

It was a creative endeavor, she adds, explaining that he received art credit for the graphic design of his Burton signature snowboard and clothing line; video credit for a snowboarding DVD called “The White Album”; economics credit for refinancing his first house and English credit for media interviews.

At the cap-and-gown ceremony, 75 graduates received diplomas. White stood with his classmates, beaming, and afterward proclaimed it to be an experience he would cherish forever.

Or at least until February.