Olympic snowboarder Shaun White apologizes for costume

Snowboarder Shaun White apologized to the Special Olympics community Monday after dressing up for Halloween as “Simple Jack,” a character with an intellectual disability from the 2008 movie “Tropic Thunder.”

White, a three-time Olympic gold medalist, posted a picture of the costume on Instagram over the weekend, which sparked a backlash from people associated with the Special Olympics.

Soeren Palumbo, the co-founder of the organization’s “Spread the Word to End the Word” campaign, told The Huffington Post in part of a statement that “disability is not a joke nor should it be a punchline.”

White has since deleted the Instagram post and replaced it with an apology, which he also posted to Twitter.

“I owe everyone in the Special Olympics community an apology for my poor choice of Halloween costume the other night,” White wrote on social media. “It was a last minute decision. It was the wrong one. The Special Olympics were right to call me out on it. They do great work supporting so many tremendous athletes and I am sorry for being insensitive. Lesson learned.”

The Special Olympics’ branded Twitter account thanked White for his apology in a reply to White’s tweet, adding that “you always have an invitation to shred with our athletes at #XGames Aspen!”

“Simple Jack” is a character from a fictional movie within the plot of “Tropic Thunder,” portrayed by actor and director Ben Stiller. The character, like White, has red hair and freckles and sparked criticism following the movie’s release roughly a decade ago for its crude portrayal of a person with an intellectual disability.