You Can Watch It, But Can You Describe It?

My freestyle ability is, to put it politely, limited. I add something new every so often, but mostly I like cruising on the mountain. That doesn’t mean that I can’t enjoy watching a freestyle competition.

On the other hand, I can’t necessarily describe all that goes on. Take, for example, a recent story from Ski Press. It was about the results of the U.S. Open. The snowboarding one, not the golf one.

On the men’s side, the winner of the slopestyle event was Travis Rice. What did he do to win? He executed “a frontside boardslide on the first rail to a backside 720 Japan air, frontside 720 melon grab, backside rodeo 720 nosegrab, switch backside 180 and a front boardslide to 270 off on the final rail.”

Got that?

In the women’s competition, Jamie Anderson’s triumphant run include “a frontside 180 indy grab, Cab 540, frontside 360, method air and a nose press to tail press on the last rail.”

I almost understand what happened there.

To be fair, this isn’t one of those “Those darn kids” rants. Every sporting activity has its terminology. A fan of U.S. football, for example, will have no problem telling you the difference between a post pattern, a corner route, and a corner blitz. Actually, Ski Press did a good job of describing, for those who can unlock the language, just what happened.