Gold Medal Gluttony

Wednesday night in Vancouver, as everyone who bothered to open their eyes this morning knows, 23-year-old Shaun White became the first person to ever win two consecutive gold medals in the snowboarding halfpipe competition. Granted, the sport has only been worthy of the Olympics since 1998 and its athletes are still considered — as one grouchy old man on MSNBC’s disgustingly bad “Morning Joe” put it — “the same hippie kids who show up on your door smelling like pot and asking for food.”

Well, this particular stoner kid won his second gold medal by careening off the 22-foot-tall halfpife, performing two front flips, twisting 3-and-a-half times and then landing. On his feet. And since he was the one to invent the maneuver (and the only person to execute it successfully so far) White of course gets the all-important naming rights. And for this trick, White chose “The Tomahawk.” Don’t think about it too much. These are snowboarders we’re talking about.

White explains that he came up with the name for the trick during his strenuous training regimen: “I was eating two steaks. The first one was in New York and it was called the Double Eagle. I thought this is an amazing name for a trick. Then I was in Aspen and had a steak call the Tomahawk. It was like a big-boned Tomahawk, 30 oz. I finished it.” (Now that deserves a gold medal.)

While it does seem a little strange that the restaurants gave such creative names to their steaks (then again, maybe it’s just the weed speaking — perhaps we should ask White if the steaks also tried to talk to him) we are pleased that such fine cuts of beef both inspired and most likely gave the so-called “Animal” of snowboarding the strength he needed to accomplish this remarkable feat.

And for White, the gluttony doesn’t stop with the Gold: “The owner [of the Aspen restaurant] said if I play video games with his son, I’m going to have free Tomahawks for life.” That poor child.

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