Shaun White is a great Olympian, but that doesn’t make him a hero

When American snowboarder Shaun White won his third gold medal, scoring 97.75 on his last run and beating out Japan’s Ayumu Hirano’s 95.25, the story we placed on him was the one of redemption. After finishing fourth in the Olympics in Sochi and suffering a scary fall in October which led to him getting 62 stitches, he was now back on top of the sport.

Sport has a very limited number of stories that it can tell. You’ve got the underdog story (which would have applied to Hirano had he won). You’ve got the greatest of all time “cementing the legacy” narrative, which could have been applied to White, but in this instance, wasn’t. (Perhaps the short history of snowboarding in the Olympics made it hard to really get historical with its narrative.)

No, he got the moment of redemption narrative. Which is odd; he’s the most decorated and wealthiest snowboarder ever.

It was also odd that he was being celebrated for this moment of redemption when just a year ago he was facing a sexual harassment lawsuit filed by Lena Zawaideh, the former drummer of his band. The suit was settled last summer and White dismissed it in a celebration interview as gossip. Then another reporter who also wanted to ask about the case was passed over and none of the women in the press seats was called on to question him:

After that, the behavior was mentioned begrudgingly, because it is a moment of celebration. But also, what has to be sold by the Olympics and then the media that covers it isn’t Shaun White the actual person, but Shaun White the Olympian. The American gold medal winner.

What did White really redeem himself from? When he failed in the last Olympics, he failed because, as he himself admitted, he was a bit bored and complacent, and his version of “failure” was to come in fourth place, something most snowboarders could never dream of doing. His redemption isn’t from any real fall, at least not in terms of his history; it’s him going from amazing to great then back to amazing again.

The sports world wants and needs to tell stories of heroes. It cries out for myths of men and women who overcome obstacles, strive for greatness, are champions of individualism. Actual life is much more complicated. Too complicated.

When the real world impinges on sports narratives, complicating them, both fans and media are willing to look the other way for the sake of preserving these tales of heroism; to find those cathartic moments. They do this by dismissing everything bad that the athlete does as a one-time mistake, a setback, or by finding a way to twist the actions into something to be overcome; just another obstacle on the path to greatness.

But sports can’t run from real life forever. If White is that redemptive hero that he’s painted as then he should be unafraid to face questions about his personal behavior. And the sporting world should be comfortable with the discomfort of seeing one of the greatest athletes of skateboarding answer those questions.

White’s greatness in the sport should and can be celebrated without having to dismiss or gloss over the negative things about him.

White is a person. Like all people, he’s complicated. He’s a phenomenal Olympian, a snowboarder who has always been good from a frighteningly young age, someone whose colleagues aren’t particularly fond of him because, depending on who you believe, he shuns the camaraderie that is a staple of their community or the other snowboarders are jealous.

He’s an athlete who has more resources and can afford to train for longer and in better conditions than everyone else in his sport. He’s also a person who settled a sexual harassment case in which he was accused of sending Zawaideh sexually explicit images, which he admitted to, and forcing her to cut her hair and wear revealing clothing.

That does not mean that his three Olympic golds were not earned or that those tears he shed after he won gold were not real. It just means that the human story is more complicated than the heroic myth. There’s enough space for that, and people are intelligent enough, one would hope, to deal with it.

The redemption story can be fine for White for himself because he did have to overcome his own internal struggles, and an injury like he had to someone who has never suffered a serious injury must have been a shock and hard to deal with. But it’s dishonest to sell someone as a hero to the public, using all the good attributes to promote it while ignoring (or outright silencing) anything negative about him. At that point, it’s propaganda.