LOS ANGELES --- It was just a matter of time before the conversation wound around to Winston Churchill.
Two questions, really.
That's the charm of interviewing snowboarding and skateboarding star Shaun White. You can design a well-thought-out plan of chatter, but that would be predictable and boring, two words not belonging in any sentence with White's name. Option two: Let White seize the conversation and run with it, taking the talk where it needs to go.
This onramp led to Churchill when talk moved to the inevitable hangover facing almost all athletes after a hugely successful turn -- and in this case, a double McTwist 1260 by White in Vancouver, Canada -- and resulting in a gold medal for the snowboarder in the halfpipe at the Olympics.
"It's crazy," White said. "A friend of mine was talking about how Winston Churchill would come out of battles and wouldn't know what to do with himself.
"You know what I mean? It's one of those things where you put everything on the table and you really focus on one thing and you clear that hurdle."
Different tricks, different competitors and being able to come in from the cold have prevented it from all getting too old too fast for White, who turns 24 in September. The mountain is fine and all, but there will be new heights for White to conquer at the X Games in downtown L.A.
"This has been the biggest thing that's kept me going in the sport," White said of the snowboarding-skateboarding balancing act. "It makes everything fresh again. Otherwise I'd be another guy standing on the mountain waiting for it to snow again."
He will be competing in two X Games events, skateboard vert and skateboard vert best trick, both today at Nokia Theatre.
White's preparation was curtailed when he twisted his ankle in mid-May while skating at a park in Venice, Calif.
Most recollections of the Winter Olympics in Vancouver hit upon two transcendent moments -- the gold-medal men's hockey game between Canada and the United States and White's near-flawless second halfpipe run.
White not only captured gold but helped NBC do the same, delivering a ratings bonanza that night.
Which raises the question: Couldn't skateboarding hit the same note at the Summer Olympics?
"I'm surprised skateboarding is not in already," White said. "I'm sure it'll be on its way. All the skateboard athletes wanted to know what the Olympics were like: 'What are we up against? What's going on?' So that was pretty cool. I was in the dad pants, telling them what it was like."
Just as long as the dad pants were hip.
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