Shaun White says students entering sports should understand the game before the data

ASPEN, Colo. – Shaun White said artificial intelligence may change who gets access to the kind of sports analysis that once belonged mostly to elite athletes and full-time coaches.

White, a three-time Olympic gold medalist in snowboarding and founder of The Snow League, spoke June 9 at Fortune Brainstorm Tech about how AI and data are entering winter sports.

He described a sport that looked very different when he started. Early halfpipes were hand-dug with shovels, he said. Athletes filmed runs with camcorders, watched the footage later and tried to figure out what went wrong.

Now, White said, AI tools can break down a run almost immediately. They can show speed, height, spin rate, trajectory and other details that athletes, coaches, broadcasters and judges can use to understand what happened.

“You can take it, put it into this tool, see how fast you’re going, how high you’re going, the velocity of the rate of the spin,” White said.

For White, that does not mean sports become less human. He said he would hate for technology to replace the feeling of dropping into a run, feeling the wind and jumping through the air. But he said it can help athletes and others around the sport see what happened more clearly.

FoxTalk asked White what students who are not athletes should learn if they want to enter sports as AI and data become more common.

White said the answer starts with understanding the sport itself.

“I think being able to understand the dynamics of the sport,” White said.

He said AI and data can help students who want to enter sports through broadcasting, coaching or other roles around athletes.

“This technology will only help people wanting to get into the broadcast, get into the coaching side of things,” White said.

For a student who wants to coach, White said, technology can help them support athletes even if they were not elite competitors themselves.

“Imagine if you’re a coach, you’re starting out,” White said. “You love the sport. You didn’t really have the skills to cut it. Now you’re kind of in this industry. You want to be part of it. You can now use this technology to help your athletes help them get to the place that they want to go.”

He said broadcasters could also use AI-generated data to explain sports with more detail. Instead of only telling viewers that a jump was big, a broadcaster could talk about how fast an athlete was moving, how many degrees they rotated or what angle they used.

“If you’re a broadcaster, think of the information that you now have to talk about the sport,” White said.

White also said the technology could help fans understand a sport like snowboarding, where the tricks can be difficult to explain quickly. He gave the example of a double McTwist 1260, which he said includes two flips and three rotations.

That kind of move can be hard for casual viewers to follow. Data may make the difference between one run and another easier to see.

“It’s really bringing it down and breaking it down to a palatable level for people so they could understand the sport better,” White said.

White said AI could also assist judging, though he said he does not want it to replace the human element because snowboarding still has a style component.

Later in the panel, an audience member asked whether too much data could hurt the love of sport for young athletes.

White said the technology should assist, not replace, the experience of playing or competing.

“We’re not trying to replace the human experience,” White said.

He said athletes will still have to decide which information helps and which information to ignore.

“It’s really kind of using it to your advantage,” White said.