Shaun White’s messy ‘redemption’ tour, on and off the halfpipe

Shaun White’s “redemption” tour, as the NBC Olympics broadcast has termed it, is about more than snowboarding. Where does that leave sportswriters?

On Tuesday night, or Wednesday morning, depending on the time zone, the world will watch in primetime as two-time Olympic gold medalist Shaun White attempts to earn his third in men’s halfpipe.

In the qualification round, aired late Monday night, White proved that his recent, horrific injuries, which might have prevented him from qualifying for Team USA altogether, won’t be enough to stop him from his quest for a third gold.

Following a September crash that sent him to the hospital, in October, training to qualify for the Olympics, White smashed his face up on the lip of a halfpipe.

You can see the video here, but be warned: it’s gruesome.

62 stitches later, White’s face — which has quite literally become the center of his company, Shaun White Enterprises — shows hardly a scar, but he has carried the experiences with him into what many believe will be his final quest for snowboarding gold.

If there were questions about White’s health or headspace heading into the 2018 Winter Games, he put them to rest, for now, in the halfpipe qualifiers.

White earned the top score in his first qualifying run with a 93.25, and then he went ahead and topped that for a 98.50 on his second run, pretty damn close to a perfect 100.

Oh, and about that — men’s snowboarding judges have only ever given out two perfect 100s. White owns both of them.

But even though White may be as close as it gets to perfect on the pipe, he’s far from it off it.

White received his first snowboarding sponsorship with Burton at seven years old. Yes; seven.

He’s been in the spotlight for a long time, and, occasionally, it has shone on some less-than-stellar parts of his personality.

White’s transgressions have ranged from the fairly banal — getting arrested for vandalism and public intoxication as a 26-year-old after attending The Black Keys drummer Patrick Carney’s wedding — to something far more insidious.

In 2017, Lena Zawaideh, the former drummer of White’s band, Bad Things, brought a lawsuit against him for, initially, breach of contract for failing to pay her salary and, then, added sexual harassment allegations to her suit.

Zawaideh’s allegations included instances of “sending her sexually explicit and graphic images, making vulgar sexual remarks and other crude behavior.”

White denied the harassment allegations, issuing a statement that read, “Many years ago, I exchanged texts with a friend who is now using them to craft a bogus lawsuit. There is absolutely no coincidence to the timing of her claims, and we will defend this vigorously in court.”

White and Zawaideh did eventually reach a settlement out of court in May 2017, the terms of which have not been released.

That’s not a storyline you’ll hear much about on NBC’s official Olympics broadcast as the network continues to make White the face of its American coverage.

The Olympics are designed to bring us together through sports.

But all too often in the 24-hour news cycle, they do just the opposite, dividing us by feeding us a steady diet of pieces that tell us what we should think about, well, everything.

Zawaideh’s allegations are troubling, as is the mainstream media’s failure to acknowledge them in the post-#MeToo era.

And it’s frustrating to those who want to support White as he attempts to unite Americans by coming home wearing a piece of gold hardware around his neck that we’ll probably never know the truth surrounding the incident, especially since it’s a safe bet that the settlement included some kind of non-disclosure agreement.

It’s no secret that as we’ve watched him grow up in the spotlight over the past 24 years, we’ve seen White at his worst — immature, self-absorbed, reckless, destructive.

We’ve also borne witness to quite possibly the best performances ever by anyone who has ever strapped a board to his or her feet. From White first gold medal in Turin to his first-ever Double McTwist at the 2010 Vancouver Games, regardless of what you think about him off the pipe, White’s talent is once-in-a-generation.

White finished fourth at the 2014 Sochi Games, just off the podium, which is the basis of the media’s focus on his “redemption” storyline.

“People ask, ‘When are you going to get over it?’ You know, the loss or whatever. You don’t, you don’t really ever get over it,” White told NBC in 2017.

And there’s no question that White has attempted to remake himself ahead of these Pyeongchang Games, both on and off the course.

“I came back this time around with a new coach, new trainer, new physical therapist, new sponsors, new haircut. Everything just feels different, so it’s very exciting,” White said.

White can cut his flowing red hair, drop the “Flying Tomato” nickname, and attempt to convince the public that he’s a good guy. Whether people want to buy into that is their prerogative.

But even if Shaun White the person cannot be redeemed, Shaun White the snowboarder very well may be.

If his qualification run showed us anything, not even the most talented young snowboarders in the world like Australia’s Scotty James, 23, or Japan’s Ayumu Hirano, 19, will be able to knock White off his place atop the podium.

Their chance to win gold will come around again in 2022…and 2026…and 2030.

But White’s time is now, and even if you turn the television off the second he completes his run and never buy a magazine with his face on the cover, don’t do yourself the disservice of ignoring his gold-medal run.

If you love sports, they rarely get much better than this.

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