With 18 medals, including 13 golds, American Shaun White is the most successful winter athlete of all time in the history of the X Games.

But now it looks like the 35-year-old, who also has three Olympic gold medals on his merit list, could miss the Olympics in Beijing next month - which he said would be his last Olympic game.

Had covid-19 last month

White was forced to withdraw from this weekend's World Cup competitions in American Mammoth Mountain.

White suffered from covid-19 at the end of December, but was still registered and participated in Saturday's slopestyle competitions - where he finished in twelfth place in the qualifiers.

But when it was time for the finals on Sunday, he withdrew.

According to the American coach Mike Jankowski, it was due to an ankle injury, but according to a source to the American news agency AP, White's relapse is due to remaining covid symptoms - both fatigue and breathing problems.

One place remains

After the weekend's competitions, in principle the entire American snowboard squad for the Olympics was selected, as the weekend's competitions were the last that skiers could qualify for.

The squad lacked Shaun White's name.

However, there is another place open in each category, which the national team management itself can choose who should have.

Whether Shaun White gets one of those seats remains to be seen.

MORE SNOWBOARD: Rare trick from Swedish Olympic skiers (November 18):

Javascript is disabled

Javascript must be turned on to play video

Read more about browser support

The browser is not supported

SVT does not support playback in your browser.

We therefore recommend that you switch to a different browser.

Read more about browser support

Snowboarder Niklas Mattsson recently landed a rare backside in 1980. Photo: SVT.