SHAUN WHITE IN CHINA: Two-Time Olympic Snowboard Gold Medalist

A forty-meter high kicker was built in the Olympic Sports Center Stadium in Beijing for Shaun White and Oakley's Air & Style snowboard competition, the largest alternative extreme sports competition ever held in China. China’s top snowboarders appeared with some of snowboards best in the world. The event was broadcast live to an estimated 50 million people. Photograph by Matthew Niederhauser

Two-time Olympic Snowboard Gold Medalist Shaun White in Beijing
Photograph by Mary Dennis

Shaun White and Burton Snowboarder, "Little Tiger", Beijing

Photograph by Mary Dennis

Shaun White and Burton China's William Avedon, Beijing 2010
Photograph by Mary Dennis

Burton Snowboarder, Wang Lei, and Shaun White, Beijing 2010
Photograph by Mary Dennis

Burton dealer, Eric Wen, presenting traditional gifts to Shaun White, Beijing
Photograph by Mary Dennis

Mike Stein, CAA, Shaun White and William Avedon, Burton event, Beijing
Photograph by Mary Dennis

Two-time Olympic Snowboard Gold Medalist, Shaun White, arrived in China for the first major snowboard contest of the 2010/2011 season - Air & Style Beijing - presented by Oakley and Shaun White. To kick-off his arrival, Burton Snowboards invited Shaun to meet some of Burton China's top Snowboarder's and Burton Snowboard distributor's from all across China, some traveling over a 1,000 miles to meet him. Everyone brought traditional gifts from their area of the country and Shaun graciously signed T-shirts, snowboards, and skateboards for everyone.

Air & Style Beijing, is Saturday in the Olympic Sports Center Stadium, Beijing, China. The first six-star TTR event of the season, which means not only will 16 riders be competing for a $100,000 dollar prize, and the glory that comes from an Air & Style win, they'll also be competing for 1,000 TTR World Ranking points. It’s the first major throw-down of the season with Scotty Lago, Peetu, Marco Grilc, i-Pod, Mikkel, Kazu, Seb Touts, Halldor and more… No matter what happens, it won't affect the rankings for the Dew Tour Dew Cup or the Burton Global Open series because those series haven't yet started. – read more on ESPN

UPDATE: William Avedon said today's Air & Style Beijing Contest was an amazingly high energy event. 10,000 people, the Chinese audience was enthralled! Most had never seen snowboarders before.