Shaun White back to chase Olympic history

At his insistence, no one calls Shaun White "The Flying Tomato" any more. He's 27 now, with expensive suits in his closet and more marketing and business connections than X Game medals. Even his trademark long red hair has been closely cropped and professionally styled.

The two-time Olympic gold-medal winner in the snowboard half-pipe, perhaps the biggest celebrity and most recognizable face extreme sports has yet produced, is growing up. He's discovered there's more to life than the snowy sky stunts that made him famous.

But this is an Olympic year and the California native, who has admitted to experiencing letdowns between Games, feels like a brash kid again.

In addition to the half-pipe, White has also qualified for slopestyle snowboarding at Sochi, a first-time event. He is one of only a handful of snowboarders eligible in both disciplines.

Excited by the prospect of doubling his gold-medal haul, he also knows that a triumph in his signature half-pipe would make him the first American winter athlete to capture an event at three consecutive Games.

Those opportunities, played out on the world's grandest athletic stage, have recharged his daredevil batteries, refilled his competitive-adrenaline tank.

"After my first Olympics, I didn't know what to do with myself," he said recently. "I got super depressed and I didn't know how to make myself feel the same.

"Nowadays I don't feel compelled by that same, 'I have to prove something,' but just by the excitement of the Olympics. That just brings a whole new level of determination out of people, especially me."

For White, the 2014 Winter Olympics will begin Thursday, a day before the opening ceremonies, with slopestyle qualifying.

In that new event, which seems perfectly suited to White's showmanship, snowboarders race down a mountainside while attempting daring tricks and soaring as high as they're able.

During a practice run Tuesday, White fell and slightly injured a wrist, just one of several serious tumbles at what is proving to be a treacherous slopestyle course at Rosa Khutor Extreme Park in Krasnaya Polyana.

While he said afterward that he would be ready on Thursday, another top medal hopeful, Torstein Horgmo of Norway, broke a collarbone and will miss the event.

"It's a little intimidating," White told reporters after his first exposure to the course, which has drawn complaints from several snowboarders.

American Jamie Anderson, one of the favorites in the women's event, told the Associated Press that it was "a little intense."

"Everybody's making the best of it," she said. "I'm having a questionable time getting used to it. But I'm just being slow, patient, taking one jump at a time."

For many of the slopestyle snowboarders at Rosa Khutor, it was their first encounter with White, who, partly because of his busy extracurricular schedule, has skipped recent competitions.

"All these competitors in slopestyle, they haven't really had to deal with me," he said. "I'm hoping to surprise them a little bit."

White elected to prepare for these Games by training solo in Colorado, California, and Australia; by jamming with his rock band (Bad Things recently released its first album); and by shepherding business interests that range from his self-titled video game to feature-film appearances to clothing, equipment, and gum endorsements.

That's an impressive business resumé for an athlete whose sport wasn't even on the radar 20 years ago. It's come about because White's been able to make a brand out of himself.

According to recent market research, an astonishing 63 percent of Americans know who he is, a share many athletes in the major professional sports would envy.

"All these companies, they want to reach my generation," he said. "And they feel like I can help them do that."

Now that he is 27 in an extremely physical sport, one whose most ardent devotees tend to be obsessed teenagers, White's body is paying the price for all that big air.

In addition to the wrist he tweaked Tuesday, he fell hard on his face training in Colorado, and prior to that injured his ankle and jammed his shoulder. That last injury continues to bother him.

"The shoulder still needs to cooperate more," he told the AP Tuesday. "It's a little rough."

To get to the slopestyle finals, when his juices will really start flowing, White - more experienced than virtually all his rivals - must endure Thursday's qualifying.

That, he predicted, would not be a problem.

"With age, I've learned a lot more about myself and how I get things done and when to push forward or not," he said. "That's the only [thing] that I carry with me that the other guys don't."

@philafitz