The pioneering snowboarder Shaun White bowed out after his fifth Games and in doing so passed the torch to Ayumu Hirano
![Farewell to the Flying Tomato: how Shaun White left an Olympic legacy](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/533c4d61e2bcd309393d04cd9dd69889f27ddba9/0_170_5000_3002/master/5000.jpg?width=1200&height=630&quality=85&auto=format&fit=crop&overlay-align=bottom%2Cleft&overlay-width=100p&overlay-base64=L2ltZy9zdGF0aWMvb3ZlcmxheXMvdGctZGVmYXVsdC5wbmc&enable=upscale&s=a8118e8f34d0407808fb02d8978efba8)
This time Ayumu Hirano would not be denied. Not by the judges. Not even by the greatest snowboarder in history. Instead, amid the most intense pressure and anger, the 23-year-old from
Japan found the halfpipe equivalent of the holy grail.
And as Hirano stood on the podium with his gold medal there was a sense of something else too. That a torch was being passed from one generation to the next, as if by osmosis, from Shaun White to Hirano: from the goat to the new breed of bucks pushing at the boundaries like the
American once did.