OlymPicks: Shaun White Returns to the Circuit and Two Skaters Decide Their Fates

If all goes according to plan, US halfpipe snowboarders will be hitting the slopes before winter’s end in a bid to qualify for their place at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics, despite the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. While this is doubtlessly an exciting time for the team, what makes it even more exciting is that this season’s qualifiers and training will see the return of US snowboarding wunderkind, Shaun White, who hasn’t competed on the half-pipe since Pyeongchang’s 2018 Games. According to US halfpipe rookie team member, Jason Wolle, White “brings an interesting energy to the team,” adding, “He brings that kind of shock and awe factor.” 

Since White’s departure from the competitive circuit – along with 2018’s silver medalist, Japanese rider Ayumu Hirano – there’s been a revolving power vacuum filled by Yuto Totsuka of Japan, Switzerland’s Jan Scherrer, and Scotty James of Australia, in turn. Nevertheless, White’s return is seen as a major advantage for the US team as a whole, and for each athlete individually. “Everyone realizes he’s here and he’s kind of always been one of those people, someone that you want to beat in a way,” teammate Chase Blackwell told The Aspen Times. “For me, it fires me up he’s going to make a run for it again.”

Two Olympic skaters decide their fate

Last week, 22-year-old US Olympic figure skater Polina Edmunds announced that she would permanently hang up her skates before the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympic Games. Making her Olympic debut during the 2014 Sochi Winter Games, Edmunds was the youngest athlete of any sport at 15-years-old and had a promising career ahead of her. Unfortunately, however, after suffering a debilitating bone bruise in her foot in 2016, that career was tragically put on hold. After withdrawing from a number of competitions and qualifiers through 2018 because of the injury, Edmunds decided to take a solid ten months away from the rink so that she could give her foot the uninterrupted time it needed to recover. That plan went well, and Edmunds supplemented her time off the ice with hiking trips and a devout SoulCycle regiment, doing everything in her power to keep her body in tip-top shape. And yet, when her foot finally healed earlier this year, and she was preparing for practice and to re-enter the competitive fold, everything came crashing down once again with the onset of COVID-19, which effectively closed all indoor rinks and led to nationwide competitions being canceled. 

“If things were different with the last six months and coronavirus never happened, then I think I definitely would be in full training mode right now. I was very focused for the 2022 Games,” Edmunds told the podcast, What Fulfills You? in July. To be sure, it was not a decision she made lightly, telling the podcast Bleav: When Your Sport Ends that, “At first, it just felt unreal to even think about dropping skating because it had always been this huge part of my identity. But then as I started talking it out with more of my family and more of my friends, it was really emotional,” adding, "Every time I talked about it, I would start to cry, just because I couldn’t fathom the idea of stopping.” So what’s next for Edmunds? Well, due to her lengthy injury, she was able to complete a communications degree at Santa Clara University in California. What’s more, she has also started her own website as well as a skating podcast, proving that while it might be possible to take the skater out of the sport, you’ll never take the sport out of the skater.

Meanwhile, across the pond in Scotland, 30-year-old speed skater Elise Christie is eyeing Beijing 2022 as her last shot at an Olympic medal. Speaking to BBC’s Fair Play podcast, Christie explained that, “I’m definitely working towards an Olympic medal at the next games and hopefully a happy retirement, a happy end to my career.” More than just finding happiness, however, Christie plans on using her role on the international stage to dispel myths surrounding mental health and self-harm, two things she has struggled with herself over the years. On her final Olympic performance, Christie said, “I want to be in a good place mentally and I want to be open about what’s going on and who I am, rather than hiding behind everything. I want to come out of it saying, ‘that was my best shot.’”

New commemorative stamps released

Last Saturday, Nov 7, China Post and the Beijing Winter Olympics Organizing Committee released a new set of commemorative stamps celebrating various ice sports including figure skating, speed skating, curling, and ice hockey. The stamps are printed on clear paper adorned with photosensitive ink snowflakes. Additionally, a QR code on each full page of stamps leads to video clips of the sports, which is a super fun way to mitigate counterfeiting. 

The stamps were unveiled during an event featuring performances by world champions Pang Qing and Tong Jian. Interestingly, deputy secretary-general of the Beijing Winter Olympics Organizing Committee, Xu Zhijun said that Olympic commemorative stamps are the oldest souvenir in the history of the Olympic Games. While we haven’t fact-checked this, we’re willing to take his word for it. After all, they’re stamps. 

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Images: Team USA, Mercury News, WSJ, China Post, Beijing Winter Olympics Organizing Committee