Carlsbad native and Olympian Shaun White is heading to the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, with something to prove.
White wants to show the world he can still dominate after failing to win a medal at the last Olympics.
"There's moments where I'll kind of trip out where I see something, or someone introduces me, and they're like he's done this and he's done that, and they kind of list the accomplishments, because I don't really connect them. Once I've won that kind of lasts a little bit and then it fades, and then you need to do it again," White told NBC 7.
Time has flown by for the snowboarder once called the Flying Tomato, the teen who captured the first-ever Olympic Halfpipe Gold in 2006, and then again four years later.
But at the last Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia, White shocked the world again, this time by finishing fourth and missing the medal stand.
"I remember like 'oh, this is what this feels like' you know, it was rough," he recalled.
White is no longer the freakishly talented teenager who swept the Winter Olympics.
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Now, he is a freakishly successful business man in his early 30s. He is a clothing designer who puts on huge events and, in his spare time, he learns Spanish and takes singing lessons.
"I was in a band, the band split up, and I was left with what do I do now?" White said. "Instead of going 'oh the bands done, and blah, blah blah,' I went you know what I'm going to learn how to sing, that'll be fun, I'm going to learn piano because it's a different type of music that I've ever gone for."
But the clock is ticking towards February 2018, and White is refocusing on South Korea with one goal: reclaiming gold.
"Winning the Olympics is like winning a high five hall pass. Everyone is just like - anywhere, the pilots, the train conductor, if you take a train," he said.
