Shaun White: “This is that last dance”

The end is near for snowboarding legend Shaun White. The only question is how will it end?

Not only will these be the American’s last Olympic Games, but, as he announced late last week in a tearful press conference, these cruises through the halfpipe at the Genting Snow Park will be his last as a competitive snowboarder.

“Everything's got this glow on it because it's my last time,” he told Olympics.com in an interview in January, just on the cusp of his fifth and final Olympic Games. “It's just like the way that the world spins.”

He's already taken two of his five final passes through the pipe – the apparatus with which he's become synonymous over the course of the last two decades. He fell on his first run in Monday's qualifiers. All looked bleak then and it seemed, perhaps, like time had caught up with the oldest of all 25 men's competitors.

But he looked his old self an hour later when he dropped in for his second run. White flew and spun freely and turned back the years.

If we use history as a guide, the 35-year-old will fly highest and best and walk off into a dramatic Beijing sunset in the finals. If it were a movie, that's how it would end. But maybe that’s only nostalgia for this three-time gold-medal winner – the defending champion from a last-gasp victory in PyeongChang four years ago, who we’ve seen grow up from a teenage Flying Tomato on the Olympic stage.

There’s no denying what he’s done in the sport. He's a legend by any measure. Five Olympic Games. Three gold medals. More X Games crowns than anyone else. Ever.

But according to recent results, and with an exciting realignment at the top of the sport, White might not even be among the pre-finals favourites -- despite pulling it together for an admittedly