Austin Davis English 1102 03/25/2014 Professor Raymond

Professional Snowboarders
For my groups semester long project we have chosen snowboarding as our topic. I am tasked with researching snowboarding at a national level, professional snowboarders, and the Winter Olympics and how these three things all tie together. The world of snowboarding has been around for a while but it was not added into the Winter Olympics until 1998. Since it is still a newer sport to the Winter Olympics not many people knew a whole lot about it. But today that is not the case, there are so many great professional snowboarders today and some iconic snowboarders. One of the most well-known names when it comes to snowboarding today is Shaun White. Born in 1986 he began snowboarding at the age of 6, just a year before this he had two heart surgeries because of a congenital heart defect. At the age of 19 Shaun was competing at different snowboarding competitions around the country he had won 5 Grand Prix half pipe contests during the winter of 05-06. He was added to the U.S. mens Olympic snowboarding team was joined by the 19-year old White, long recognized for his creative moves and shoulder length red hair.(Jenkins) He was added to the team February 7th, 2006. Both men and womens national teams from the U.S. competed in the Sochi Winter Olympics in February. Surprisingly though the U.S. did not compete in every snowboarding event. Shaun White ended up dropping out of one event, the slope style event. This was mainly because of the dangerous course at Sochi, White had said in a press conference that the slopes were just too dangerous and did not want to risk injury because he was also competing in the half pipe event. This news came after White and some other athletes had received some serious injuries while practicing on the slope style course (Bachman).

Jenkins, Lee. "Snowboarding." New York Times [New York] 07 02 2006, n. page. Web. 25 Mar. 2014. hl5ka4cm7m.search.serialssolutions.com.librarylink.uncc.edu Bachman, Rachel. "Sochi Problems: Halfpipe Edition." Wall Street Journal [New York] 05 02 2014, Eastern Edition n. page. Web. 26 Mar. 2014. eds.b.ebscohost.com.librarylink.uncc.edu/ehost/