There’s many a fan out there who think snowboarding shouldn’t even be in the Olympics, citing the fact it is run by the FIS, the international skiing federation, which has no real long-term interest in the future of snowboarding.

Terje Haakonsen famously boycotted the Olympics in 1998, and recently told Whitelines, “They gave FIS, a ski federation, control of snowboarding, totally for commercial reasons. We all know that. And today they act as if they invented snowboarding, invented slopestyle. There’s just no respect for the history and culture of snowboarding at all. We don’t need FIS or the IOC. We can handle snowboarding ourselves.”

White, on the other hand, as with all the other competitors, simply believes it was a chance to show snowboarding, and his talents, to the wider world and that the politics are irrelevant.