Are you more like Shaun White or Evan Lysacek?  Both are bringing home Olympic gold but each took a different path to the podium.  Evan took the less risky path avoiding a quad jump in his final performance while Shaun did his signature risky move, a back-to-back double cork, under the pressure of an Olympic medal competition.  Both Evan and Shaun were awesome with performances that captured the spirit of Olympic competition and gave Americans a source of great national pride.  Evan nailed the fundamentals avoiding mistakes and beat out a competitor that attempted a bigger more risky move and missed.  Shaun was competing for more than the gold medal.  He is reinventing his sport and setting a higher standard that all other competitors are left trying to emulate.  Which athlete will be more memorable? Which path do you take to the medal stand? 

I don’t want to take anything away from Evan Lysacek.  He nailed his long routine and I loved watching his gold medal performance.  There had been a lot of hype about whether it was possible to win the gold without successfully landing a quad.  The quadruple jump with four twists in the air has been part of Olympic skating competition since 1988 when Canadian Kurt Browning first landed one.  In the run up to the Vancouver games supporters of Yevgeny Plushenko, the 2006 gold medal winner in Turin, were vocal about the need to successfully land a quad to even be considered for the gold medal.  Evan was buying none of it.  He didn’t do a quad while winning the 2009 World Championships and had no intention of adding the risky move to his Olympic routine.  It worked.  He was flawless in his quest for gold while Plushenko landed the quad hard and ended up with the silver medal.  By being excellent at the fundamentals during his performance and not attempting the risky move Evan’s strategy produced a well-deserved gold medal for him and the first for an American male figure skater since Brian Boitano in 1988.

In snowboarding, the corollary to a quad jump in figure skating, is the back-to-back double cork.  You have to love the names of these moves.  The best I can explain, a double cork is two flips and three rotations (1080 degrees) with a move to grab the snowboard sprinkled in for good measure.  Doing them back-to-back is insane and considered a necessary move to be in the hunt for any Olympic medal.  For Shaun White just doing what every other serious competitor is doing in competition is not enough.  He is a game changer.  He wants to change the sport and to dominate with new moves that keep the competition chasing him.  This Olympics was no different.  After Shaun had locked down the gold medal with a great back-to-back double cork move in his first run he then went on in his second run to perform a new signature move that he invented called the double mctwist 1260.  Sounds like a milkshake.  This unbelievable move includes two board-over-head flips while making 3 ½ rotations (1260 degrees).   It doesn’t sound humanly possible but there was Shaun nailing the move reinventing his sport under the global spotlight of the Olympics.  It was game, set, and match on the spot.

I hold both of these great athletes in high esteem.  As a complete klutz I can only enjoy their accomplishments vicariously.  A gold medal, regardless of the path taken to earn it, is just plain impressive.  But as an innovation junkie I can’t help but be more taken with what Shaun White has meant for his sport and the game changing approach he brings to it.  I suspect he will be remembered within and outside of his sport longer than Evan will.  Are you more like Evan or Shaun in your work and life?  Do you try to be great at the game as it is currently defined or do you attempt to create a new game, one that you can dominate?  What’s your double mctwist 1260?