There are so many athletes in the world that it is very hard to pick a favorite. But for me, I don’t care how good people are, I care who they are as a person. That’s why my favorite athlete plays a sport I have never done in my life before. Shaun White, an Olympic snowboarder for the United States Of America.
One reason I like him so much is that of what he went through right before the Olympics and how he overcame that. In October 2017, Shaun was training for the Olympics in New Zealand and then he had a terrible crash. Here is a video to show exactly what happened. He ended up getting 62 stitches on his face, and that scared him a lot. In the video, he states “I have never really had that much blood coming out of me before.” When Snowboarders say that, you can definitely tell that something is wrong with them because they get injured a lot. But when I saw the pictures of him in the hospital, I could just tell that he was going to have an awesome comeback. When he came on for the first time after his injury, you could tell he was nervous. But by his last run in the U.S Grand Prix, he got a perfect score of 100 which made him qualify for the Olympics. So on he went to PyeongChang with the hopes of getting a gold medal. Time went by and on the day of his competition, he was ready. At the end of the first run of the snowboarder’s halfpipe final, Shaun White was in first place. But at the end of round two, he ended up in second place behind the Snowboarder Ayumu Hirano from Japan. Ayumu didn’t do well on his final run so Shaun White had a decent chance at winning if he could pull off an almost perfect score. And that’s exactly what he did. He won the Gold medal in the Olympics after he had 62 stitches on his face just a few months ago. Here is a video to show his final run. Him even competing in the Olympics shows how strong he is mentally and physically. I think that being mentally strong is the most important part of sports.