So according to an NBC interview that came out yesterday, Shaun White is back in the snowboarding game for the next Olympic cycle. Or rather, apparently he’d never left.

Nope, turns out that his cryptic blog post from last year and increased output with his band The Bad Things were just that: cryptic messages.

The funniest thing I heard is I’m retiring, in a sense, it can get twisted and turned in different ways. I think somebody in passing asked me if I was feeling like retiring, and I said no. The headline read, ‘Shaun White contemplates retirement’

So El Blanco will be back for Pyeongchang then? Stranger still is the news that he is intending to focus more on the slopestyle event than the pipe. Strange because, as we’re sure you remember, he ducked out of the Sochi slope comp just days before it started.

I’m probably more poised to compete in slopestyle in the next Olympics.

If he does indeed make it back to the next Olympics, he’ll at least be coming from a different place than he was the last two times. No longer will he be the defending champ, the world’s expectations weighing down on his shoulders – he’ll be the underdog, the comeback king, fighting for iPod‘s crown.

Hopefully that means we’ll see the old Shaun back in action again – smooth, relaxed and confident. Because when he’s on his game, he’s on to a winner.

One thing is for certain though, he’ll be reunited with friend Jamie Nicholls in Korea!