Team USA's Sage Kotsenburg won the first snowboard slopestyle gold medal in Winter Olympics history on Saturday afternoon in Sochi. Kotsenburg's underdog victory, earning him the first gold medal of the 2014 games, came over a talented field including Mark McMorris of Canada and Norway's Staale Sandbech.
Not in the field: American megastar and marketing powerhouse Shaun White, who dropped out of the slopestyle competition earlier this week after tweaking his wrist in a practice run on Sochi's difficult course.
Many see White's late cancellation as a prudent play to focus on the halfpipe contest (in which he's heavily favored). But others see a selfish move by a big-time icon at the expense of younger, hungrier snowboarders.
See also: Sage Kotsenburg: Snowboarding Gold Medal Was 'Random'
White announced that he would drop out of the slopestyle event on Wednesday, issuing a statement that read, in part, "the potential risk of injury is a bit too much for me to gamble my other Olympics goals on." Multiple snowboarders have complained about Sochi's slopestyle course, calling it unnecessarily dangerous. Torstein Horgmo of Norway broke his collarbone on a training run before the games — an injury that, unlike White's wrist, forced him to miss the entire Olympics.
Tuesday's halfpipe contest was and remains the only other event in which White is scheduled to participate. While he's the prohibitive favorite there, most snowboarding observers figured White would have to fight just to medal in the slopestyle competition, making it all the more interesting.
Taken at face value, the 27-year-old White's logic seemed simple — laudable, even. He did the reasonable, prudent thing despite having publicly said he was entering the Sochi Olympics with two gold medals in mind.
"He has no chance at that alluring double gold," John Branch of The New York Times wrote on Wednesday. "But the way he sees it, the decision reduces the chance that he will lose."
But, like every story, there's another side to this one. Team USA's slopestyle contingent was made up of four selected members. White's last-minute dropout meant there was no time to add a replacement, reducing the squad to three and forcing other riders left Stateside to wonder what might have been.
In a piece titled "Meet The American Shaun White Screwed Over" that ran Thursday, Sean Gregory of Time interviews Brandon Davis, an 18-year-old from Mammoth Lakes, Calif. Gregory identifies him as the American most likely to have filled White's vacant slopestyle spot.
“I should be there, but Shaun decided he didn’t want to do it,” Davis tells Time. “It’s not a big deal for him. But for most people, the Olympics is a whole other level. It could have kicked started my career a bit, and gotten the ball rolling. But Shaun kind of dropped out like it’s nothing.”
Davis is right — dropping out is nothing for White. He's still the biggest star action sports has, as has been the case for years. He's still a marketer's dream. And, no matter what plays out, he'll emerge from the Sochi Olympics an even richer, more famous man.
Nevertheless, Gregory, writes, "preventing a teammate from achieving his dream is one of the worst Olympic sins."
Yet if White performs as expected and puts on an aerial show in Tuesday's halfpipe competition, that sin will be quickly forgotten by most. But not by all.
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