Iconic super-athlete who's dropped into various action sports and beaten the best, named USA Today's World's Greatest Athlete and Details Magazine's Athlete of the Year in 1998, received ESPN's ESPY Award for Action Athlete of the Year in 2001, five-time World Champion snowboarder, X Games gold medalist in Boardercross, downhill biking, Skiercross and Ultracross, won the Toyota Celebrity Grand Prix, missed a downhill mountain bike world championship title by .15 second, has his own video game Shaun Palmer's Pro Snowboarder 2, owns his own snowboard company (Palmer Snowboards) and has raced AMA supercross and motocross mains. Next? Going after gold at the 2010 Winter Olympics. Age: 40.
www.shaunpalmer.com
I got into dirt bikes when I was about four or five years old. My mom picked me up from school in a Camaro with an MR50 in the back. That was probably the best day of my life.
I grew up down in Carlsbad (California) with my uncle, who was racing Marty Tripes and all those guys in the day, and then we moved to Tahoe when I was in second grade.
I'm sure if I'd have stayed in Carlsbad and grew up racing all the time, just dirt biking, it would've probably turned into a career. But up in Tahoe I got into skiing, snowboarding, mountain biking, BMX, motocross and everything, just because of the seasons. That's how I got into doing multiple sports.
Motocross is definitely my favorite sport, always has been. It's the number one on my list because it's man and machine. It's definitely the best sport in the world.
I always dove into other sports and I wanted to go right to the top. Motocross has always been the toughest for me because it is the toughest sport. And with bikes and trying to prep, you need so much support in motocross besides yourself training that it's always hard. Then I was always juggling my career in other sports to make money, so I never really had enough time to do motocross the way I really wanted to do it.
One of the best stories from the Crossover [Monster Energy's Crossover event at Hangtown] was 2004, I think. There was a line all the way out to the highway and I was late. I just geared up and rode my bike all the way into the track from the highway. Past the cops and everybody. [Ed. Note: He won.