Hair superiority
sponsored since he was 7,
the 22-year-old White may
be the youngest veteran in
pro sports.
ing his presence in the first. Even his for-
mer boss reluctantly understands. “I
looked at it and said, ‘I can see it from his
perspective,’” says Volcom CEO Richard
Woolcott. “We had a great run with
Shaun. He has an extraordinary opportu-
nity to pioneer a name and a brand and to
connect with a lot of customers. It’s like
when Nike and Michael Jordan took it to
another level. I would rather have him,
but he’ll always be family.”
As the party ramps up, Joe Prebich, a
team manager at Red Bull, is goofing with
White and some special lady friends. Pre-
bich, 25, looks like Jesus if the Son of Man
had a stylist; for White, he’s a kind of
work-life-balance guru—packing a life-
time supply of caffeine. “Joe is like a guy
from the hippie days,” says White. “I just
look at him and think, What would it be
like to live back then? Then I realize he
is from back then, just somehow trans-
ported here.”
Prebich, who wears gold-rimmed avia-
tors and blond hair down to the middle of
his back, often helps White choreograph
his runs in both snowboarding and skate-
boarding. “Unlike other riders who just
wing it or have a vague idea of what tricks
they’re going to pull,” Prebich says,
“whether it’s in snow or skating, Shaun
has three runs worked out in his head
that build from serious to crushing.”
In contrast to other beverage brands,
Red Bull likes to think of itself as a cul-
tural company that encourages creativity
in its athletes. “We try to identify where
Shaun hasn’t been and make it happen for
him,” Prebich says. As on a recent trip to
Japan: “He’s been, like, 27 times, but he’d
never gone just to shred powder. So we
took him to this remote island, stayed in a
traditional ryokan and just lived it.” Of
course, Red Bull also brought along a
small film crew and shot the whole experi-
ence, releasing it on MTV as Shaun White
Big in Japan—and later reselling it as a DVD,
The Ultimate Ride: Shaun White.
******
a Look at tHe structure of White’s
network reveals a pattern: He sits at the
epicenter of a multipronged onslaught.
After the party, Target’s head of lifestyle
marketing, Troy Michels, recounts a trip
he took to Costa Rica with White in 2006.
They were on a boat in the Pacific, he
says, sore from the previous day’s surf
