After opening in Aspen, Colorado, next week, Shaun White’s new halfpipe league will travel to the mountain in China where he closed out his career at the 2022 Beijing Olympics.

COVID restrictions.

In Shaun White’s farewell performance, Ayumu Hirano of Japan won an elusive Olympic gold in the halfpipe with a boundary-pushing final run.

Shaun White finished third at the Laax Open in Switzerland, marking his first podium finish since he won his third Olympic gold medal in 2018 and all but cementing his spot at next month’s games in Beijing.

Shaun White all but wrapped up a spot in his fifth Olympics on Thursday when he qualified for the finals of a contest in Switzerland and his nearest American pursuer failed to move on.

The next big leap in snowboarding went down Sunday on a sun-splashed halfpipe in Colorado with a trick that set the stakes for the gold-medal race to Beijing.

Shaun White will have to wait at least one more week to get an inside track on a trip to his fourth Olympics after an eighth-place finish at the season’s first qualifying event.