Shaun White is the number 1 boarding miracle of our times. He’s won a medal in every X Games since 2002 and took Olympic gold in 2006 and 2010 in the snowboard halfpipe. His first sponsor arrived at the age of 7 and it’s been non-stop since then. The 2010 Olympics was his crowning glory with tricks never seen before in competition. How did he pull it off? Well…
Shaun White's Halfpipe
One of Mr White’s main sponsors is Red Bull. If you weren’t aware of it, Red Bull’s annual marketing budget is a fairly reasonable $900 million. About a million of this was spent building a secret halfpipe solely for Mr White’s Olympic preparations that was named Red Bull Project X.
The halfpipe was built near Silverton, Colorado – renowned for having some of the world’s best powder. Located at 12,000 ft and built in the backwoods, it was only accessible by helicopter or snowmobile and was kept secret from the outside world.
Project X was built in stages. To begin with, it was ascertained that a 30ft depth of snow was needed to create the pipe. A site was found at the bottom of a valley. Over 2 months countless helicopter trips took place, throwing 25lb explosives into snowbanks higher up the mountain, causing avalanches to pile up raw snow at the intended location.
Several Snowcats with enormous shaped blades were driven into the site. Over the course of 7 days they worked day and night to create the halfpipe.
By the end of the project Shaun White had a facility built to his exact specification. Over 190,000 cubic metres of snow had been moved. It was 550 ft in length. The foam pit at the end of the run alone took 300 hours to build, had over 3.5 tons of steel in it and contained 7200 foam blocks.
The result of all this endeavour? Victory, of course. And the pipe itself? Nature has reclaimed it. The mind, and Red Bull’s carbon footprint, boggles.
0 Response to “Not In My Back Yard Part 3”