Unfortunately, bad weather is continuing to upstage the athletes at these Games. Most notably, it forced cancellation of Alpine events for a third day yesterday.
Men’s Halfpipe
Here is what I wrote about Shaun White in “Sochi Olympics: Day 4,” February 11, 2014:
____________________
I joined the peanut gallery of those heaping scorn on Shaun White for withdrawing from Slopestyle. He is easily the biggest name in snowboarding. Yet he claims it’s too dangerous. Worse still, he admits he withdrew to give himself a better shot at gold in Halfpipe.
Except that, after watching snowboarder after snowboarder crash-land all manner of exotic tricks, I began thinking that White unwittingly ended up competing in the more dangerous event. With Slopestyle, Halfpipe, and other snowboarding events, the IOC is clearly trying to grow interest in the Winter Olympics by featuring events that have made the Winter X-Games must-see TV.
No doubt White fully appreciated that, if he didn’t win Halfpipe after withdrawing from Slopestyle, his agony of defeat would be surpassed only by his stigma of humiliation.
Well, here’s to the schadenfreude I fully anticipated would come: White did not even make the podium in Halfpipe! Frankly, it’s fair to say that never before in the history of the Olympic Games has an athlete so hyped to win gold failed to even win bronze. He finished fourth. …
I wish White lots of luck in pursuing what seems to be his greater interest these days anyway, namely, becoming a rock star!
____________________
Of course, we all love a redemption story. And narcissistic presumptions are such these days that White just knew everyone would want to see every breath he takes along his comeback trail. Only this explains his documentary SnowPack: Shuan White and the U.S. Snowboard Team.
His selfie-indulgence aside, I enjoyed watching every run of this competition. It helped that I’ve become so informed, I could almost predict the score for each one.
Sure enough, I heralded his triumph while everyone else was enduring an agonizing wait for the official score.
- Shaun White of the United States won gold; Ayumu Hirano of Japan, silver; and Scotty James of Australia, bronze.
With that, White emulated teammate Chloe Kim (Day 4) by living up to the hype. And he did it in far more dramatic fashion.
Kim scored a high of 98.25 on her third and final run. But she had no pressure because she already had a lock on gold, which made that run merely ceremonial. By contrast, White needed to score above 95.25 on his third and final run. He scored 97.75. And he performed air-to-fakies with a slightly higher degree of difficulty than Kim’s. Thrilling!
As it happened, though, he barely had a chance to celebrate. Because media reports about a sexual-harassment lawsuit began tarnishing White’s gold even before he got it. Lena Zawaideh, a former drummer in his rock band, filed it in 2016.
And here’s where my Sochi excerpt comes in. Zawaideh alleged that he reacted to his humiliation in Sochi by subjecting her to all manner of sexual humiliation. This ranged from texting her Anthony Weiner-style penis pictures to showing her feces-themed porn, featuring a priest and nun no less.
The lawsuit also said White … shoved a bottle of vodka into her mouth and forced her to drink from it … stuck his hands down his pants, approached Zawaideh, and stuck his hands in her face trying to make her smell them … and tried to kiss [her].
(Associated Press, February 14, 2018)
She was 17. White settled.
Of course, the irony is that he would have escaped this #MeToo reckoning if he hadn’t won, hence the pyrrhic redemption. Instead, his fall from grace began at his gold-medal news conference.
It’s a testament to his popularity that the reporter who asked about Zawaideh’s lawsuit came across like a skunk at a garden party. But, as he struggled to answer, White looked and sounded like he belonged not atop the Olympic podium but in the rogue’s gallery of sexual harassers.
He dismissed her allegations as mere gossip. But this is how Bill O’Reilly, Roger Ailes, Harvey Weinstein, and others tried to no avail to escape the truth and consequences of their sexual harassment.
This is why I’d be shocked if any new sponsor would touch him with a ten-foot poll. More to the point, his current sponsors might drop him like a hot potato.
He now has dozens of endorsement deals worth millions of dollars each, ranging from contracts with global corporations like AT&T to more niche companies like GoPro.
(Yahoo! Sports, February 13, 2018)
As if that were not bad enough, White incited viral outrage when, as part of his emotional celebration, he dragged the US flag in the snow. However, given the potential fallout from his sexual-harassment case, he could fairly dismiss this outrage as the overweening blandishments of idle-minded jingoists.
But God help him if #MeToo’s avenging angels begin demanding he be stripped of his Olympic medal. Because he need only look at what happened when they demanded the likes of Charlie Rose be stripped of their awards.
MEDAL COUNT: Germany 12; the Netherlands 11; Norway 11
Related commentaries:
Day 1-4…
Sochi Shaun…
Anthony Weiner…
Charlie Rose et al…