One of Idaho’s most popular Olympic and X Games athletes says he is hanging up his snowboarding boots. Hailey’s Graham Watanabe has retired.
Watanabe first came onto the U.S. Olympic team map back in 2006, when he was promoted from his board-tech position. He took that opportunity and ran with it, and went on to become the first American male to win the Snowboard Cross World Cup.
Watanabe again made the U.S. Olympic team in 2010, and it was at those Vancouver games that he gave perhaps the sound bite of the year when describing what it felt like to compete in his sport.
"Try to imagine Pegasus mating with a unicorn and the creature that they birth; I somehow tame it and ride it into the sky in the clouds and sunshine and rainbows,” Watanabe said back in 2010. “That's what it feels like."
Watanabe says that he will go on vacation in search of good snowboarding in the near future, and that he would like to complete his degree at Westminster College in Salt Lake City.
