Shaun White on Larry King speaks on hair, snowboarding, heart defect and coming full circle

Shaun White on Larry King speaks on hair, snowboarding, heart defect and coming full circle

Olympic gold medalist Shaun White made an appearance on the Larry King show on Monday, February 22, 2010. During the interview he spoke about his infamous red locks, how he began snowboarding, and his signature move that gave him a 48. 4 gold medal win. He answered questions from Facebook fans as well.

Slideshow: Shaun White rules the halfpipe, wins Olympic 2010 gold (photos, video)

On his nicknames, ‘The Flying Tomato’ and ‘The Animal’ he stated that he doesn’t mind the monikers. When asked about his hair, he responded that it’s all natural and that he doesn’t use hair products. Shaun said that when he was younger, the guys were getting into the short, spiky styles and he decided to go in an opposite direction and grew his locks out. He uses water on his hair and lets it air dry.
One of the surprising facts regarding Shaun White is that he was born with a congenital heart defect a Tetralogy of Fallot. Before Shaun White was twelve months old, he had undergone two open heart surgeries. He spoke to Larry King about them.

“It's one of those things where it doesn't really affect me as much now. It's something where I have to do checkups once in a while and all that. But it's just been amazing to actually be known and successful within my sport, and to affect a certain amount of people, where I actually have friends of friends and just random people that come to me that have the same heart condition. They're so inspired and all that.

And it's funny how life works. There's such a full circle with things, where when I was going through my heart surgeries, my family and I stayed at a certain care facility that allowed us to be a family still, and live at the hospital. And I just recently donated money to a place called Target House. It's in Memphis. They work with St. Jude Hospital. It's a long-term care facility. I was just down there before all the Olympic madness happened, and was able to hang with the kids. I basically redid their whole living room.

So it's such a wild thing for me to be standing there with these kids and to, you know, be able to relate to them on a certain level and, you know, just give back in full circle like that.”

Video: Shaun White on Larry King

Videos: Shaun White wins Olympic Gold

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