Winter Olympics: Shaun White on staying on top at 35 as he bids for fourth title at Beijing 2022

Shaun White announced himself on the world stage as a teenager at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, where he triumphed in snowboard halfpipe.

Sixteen years later, the triple Olympic champion will be in Beijing, competing at his fifth Winter Games and chasing a fourth gold medal.

The American, now 35, says his greatest accomplishment is still being «on top of a sport that's ever-changing for so long».

«I am the oldest competitor. I kind of like it as a little badge of honour,» he tells fellow Olympic snowboarder Aimee Fuller for BBC Ski Sunday.

When he won the first of his Olympic golds, his mum was there in Italy watching her son compete and, he says, told him: «You will forever be known as Shaun White, the Olympic gold medallist. You will carry that title for the rest of your life.»

Nicknamed 'The Flying Tomato' because of his long red hair, White was instantly recognisable.

«I was just 19,» he says. «I had no idea how massive that was, how many people in the world were going to tune in and see me do my thing, and afterwards I couldn't really go anywhere. It definitely changed my life.»

White says snowboarding was misunderstood at the beginning. His teachers struggled with accepting it when he asked them to set work for him while he was travelling to competitions.

«Every single step of the way felt like we were fighting to be accepted, or not looked at as if we were crazy, or that I was throwing my life away for a sport that wasn't a legitimate sport,» he explains.

But White, and snowboarding, went mainstream and he soon amassed a fortune in endorsements, following up his first Olympics with a second gold in Vancouver in 2010 and excelling at the X Games.

By 2013, he had won six superpipe titles in a row at the X Games, where