Mason Aguirre has become the latest Olympic hopeful to rule himself out of contention for a place at the games with an injury. The young American dislocated his shoulder practising for the final US team qualifiers, which are taking place this weekend in Park City.
Meanwhile Antti Autti, one of the great Finnish hopes for the games, has also injured himself, breaking a couple of ribs and damaging his spleen. It’s unclear yet whether this will rule him out of contention completely.
Aguirre is the third member of the Frends crew to drop out of the running, after Kevin Pearce suffered a serious head injury and Danny Davis crashed a quadbike into a gate at 3.30 am on Sunday.
While Davis’ injury is pure bad luck, there is some speculation that number of injuries may have been exacerbated by people pushing themselves that little bit too hard to get to the games and that injuries maybe the flipside of all the incredible progression we’ve seen this year.
Several posters on blogs and forums have suggested that Shaun White may be keeping voodoo dolls of his Olympic rivals under his bed and bumping them off one by one, but we know the real truth – everyone who’s hurt themselves so far is featured in the Olympics guide in our forthcoming issue.
At first we thought it was just coincidence, but the curse of the Whitelines Olympic contenders just seems to keep striking! KP, Mason, Antti and Danny all featured on our “Gunning for Gold” list, and Danny has a full-length interview in the issue.