Olympic superstar Shaun White has pulled out of the snowboarding slopestyle event at the upcoming Sochi games due to the course's high risk of injury.
The slopestyle event will be the first of its kind. White will still compete in the men's halfpipe, where he could potentially make history as the first American man to take home three gold medals from an Olympic event, according to TODAY.com.
"After much deliberation with my team, I have made the decision to focus solely on trying to bring home the third straight gold medal in halfpipe for Team USA," White told TODAY in a statement on Tuesday.
"The difficult decision to forego slopestyle is not one I take lightly as I know how much effort everyone has put into holding the slopestyle event for the first time in Olympic history, a history I had planned on being a part of."
The snowboarder famous for his curly red hair has suffered a number of minor injuries in practice, including jamming his left wrist on a run through the Rosa Khutor Extreme Park course.
Other snowboarders have also criticized the course, which will be the site of the first-ever slopestyle Olympic event. Because competitors are doing tricks on rails, boxes and jumps, the event has an inherent risk of injury, but the course seems especially treacherous.
Sebastian Toutant of Canada compared the course to "jumping out of a building." The course, which was modified after feedback on Monday, was described as "pretty sketchy" by Finland's Roope Tonteri.
"I just don't want to get injured," he told reporters, according to TODAY. "It's not a really fun course to ride."
Despite changes to the course that included waxing the rails and lowering the jumps, White and other snowboarders had some nasty falls.
"With the practice runs I have taken, even after course modifications and watching fellow athletes get hurt, the potential risk of injury is a bit too much for me to gamble my other Olympics goals on," White said.
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