"A backside double cork 1080! Followed by a cab triple cork 1440! Holy Crail, that was a sweet grab! The snowboarders and freestyle skiers will be speaking a language all their own as they shred some gnar (ride some gnarly conditions) at the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics. Can't tell a melon from a method grab? No worries. Here's a cheat sheet of some terms you might hear when the action starts in Livigno, Italy."
"Halfpipe: Imagine a massive tunnel that you could drive a truck through, slice the top off, then transform it into hard-packed snow. That is the halfpipe where snowboarders and freeskiers take turns zooming across its inclined slope to gather speed before launching into a series of acrobatic jumps. The halfpipe at the Livigno ski resort hosting these Olympic events measures 240 yards in length, 24 yards in width, and rises to 23.6 feet in height."
"Big air: The third of the park events consists of athletes performing one single big jump. The Livigno big air jump ramp peaks at over 40 yards. The tricky details 180, 360, 540, 1440: The degrees of a spinning trick completed in a single jump. 360 is 1 complete spin, 720 two spins, etc. The most spins completed in competition are 6 1/2. That's a 2340, both on snowboard and skis, and the massive spins like that almost always come in big air."
Snowboard and freeski competitions at Livigno include halfpipe, slopestyle and big air. The halfpipe is a hard-packed U-shaped channel 240 yards long, 24 yards wide and 23.6 feet tall where riders build speed to launch acrobatic jumps. Slopestyle features rails and molded bumps for riders to assemble polished, demanding trick sequences with jumps exceeding 27 yards. Big air centers on a single massive jump with a ramp peaking over 40 yards. Trick names indicate rotation degrees—180, 360, 540, 1440—and the largest competitive spins can reach 2340, typically performed in big air.
Read at www.mercurynews.com
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