Shaun White is no longer “the Flying Tomato,” said Elizabeth Weil in The New York Times. Though the snowboarding prodigy has made a fortune out of his persona as the cocky, redheaded dude who won Olympic gold, he has a new image for this year’s Sochi Olympics: that of the mature, polite, hardworking businessman. Now 27, he has cut his famous locks and ditched the skateboarding clothes for sharp suits, and wants everyone to forget about the 20-something brat who frittered away his money, crashed his Lamborghini, and got arrested for drunkenly trashing a hotel room. “You know those social skills you build over time? I didn’t really have those,” he says. “I was in my 20s, so I was like, I don’t want to do this—I want to have fun. I want to buy a sports car and drive.” But then he decided to clean up his life, and is now the chief of Shaun White Enterprises, the company that oversees his clothing line, sponsorships, and business partnerships. Nowadays, he spends his time training for Sochi, working on new business deals, and even collecting art. “Maybe things aren’t perfect,” says White. “But they’re a lot better than they were before.”
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