Pipe Dream

Shaun White's Colorado playground.

Last February, snowboarding legend Shaun White received a dream gift from his sponsor Red Bull: a 550-foot half-pipe carved into the side of Colorado's Silverton Mountain. White spent the rest of his winter quietly developing new tricks, like the Front Double Cork 10 (a move that spins on multiple axes and inverts White twice), in order to defend his gold medal at the Vancouver Olympics this month.