Snowboarding is arguably the most growing snow and ice sport, it debuted at the Winter Olympics in Nagano in 1998, and although it has only been more than two decades, it has become one of the hottest and most fashionable sports with its cool movement skills.
Snowboarding originated in the United States in the 1960s. Initially, enthusiasts put two skis together into a single board, using the body to control the direction of movement. It has a certain relationship with skateboarding and surfing, and the three are carried out on snow, on the ground and on the water. Snowboarding is not only young in the event itself, but also in young people, and the main audience is also young people. Young people are the future, and attracting young people is the main reason why the IOC has attracted snowboarding to the Winter Olympic Games.
China's Cai Xuetong in the competition (photo taken on February 9).
Snowboarding at the Beijing Winter Olympics has a number of competitions, requiring athletes to have a variety of different skills. U-shaped track skillers use the curved snowboard at the bottom to control and adjust the glide posture. During the race, the athletes on both sides of the U-shaped groove, using the height difference, slide from one side to the other, and make various flips and turning movements as they leave the track to vacate.
Slope obstacle course is the process of players gliding through a series of obstacles from high to low on a field with a gap, through a series of obstacles, and jumping platforms, and displaying various skills. The venue consists of a series of obstacles, jumping platforms, poles, platforms and so on.
The participants of the big jumping platform jump from a platform, get a height and forward speed, and complete various technical actions such as flips, turns, and grabs the board before landing. The above 3 sub-events are skill projects, which have certain similarities, so there are players who will be both, such as su Yiming, a mainland player, who has won the qualification for slope obstacle skills and big jumping platforms, and won the silver medal in slope obstacle course skills.
In the obstacle course, each group of 6 people generally competes in a ski race on a field with ups and downs, obstacles, and curves, comparing who finishes first, so it is a speed event. The above 4 events, snowboarding and double-board freestyle skiing shared venues, highlight the concept of "sharing". In addition, snowboarding also has a unique event of parallel giant slalom.
Snowboarding is more developed as an extreme sport, and the Winter X Games are also more or less referred to in the project setting of the Winter X Games. Therefore, many snowboarders have the extreme sports spirit of "daring to try and challenging themselves without limits".
For example, czech female player Estel Ledertska, who grew up in a family of ice and snow, also likes snowboarding and doubleboard alpine skiing, and many people advise her to focus on one, otherwise she may lose sight of the other. But she eventually chose to stick with both, and when she signed up for the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, she chose both snowboard parallel giant slalom and alpine skiing super slalom competitions. You know, one of these two competitions is a snowboard, the other is a double board, so cross-discipline participation in the Winter Olympic Games, at that time stunned everyone.
In the end, she won both competitions at the Winter Olympics, becoming the first person to win two sub-titles of alpine skiing and snowboarding at the same Winter Olympics! This feat of self-challenge is equivalent to winning the cross-event championships in short track speed skating and speed skating at the same Winter Olympics. Fast forward four years later, Ledertzka stood on the stage of the Beijing Winter Olympics, and she once again signed up for the snowboard parallel giant slalom and alpine skiing super slalom competitions. On the afternoon of February 8, she successfully won a gold medal in snowboarding, and on February 11, she will switch to the Yanqing Division, switching to alpine skiing again.
In addition to competing in the same Winter Olympics, Snowboarder Hirano Fromo from Japan completed the cross-border challenge between the Summer Olympics and the Winter Olympics. At just 15 years old, Hirano won the silver medal in the U-shaped venue of the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympics and the silver medal at the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics. Because skateboarding is similar to snowboarding, he competed in the men's skateboarding park at last year's Tokyo Olympics.
Most of the snowboarders are young people in their twenties, and 36-year-old American Lindsay Jacobellis has a feeling of "challenging herself" as soon as she gets on the field. At the Women's Steeplechase at the 2006 Winter Olympics in Turin, 20-year-old snowboard rising star Jacob Baylis made a fatal mistake - she was far ahead of her, but in the final jump she tried to "show off" to celebrate in advance, not thinking that this senseless fancy move made her accidentally fall and miss the gold medal. In the following Winter Olympics, she tried to rush to the gold.
On February 9, 2022, after five winter Olympics, she finally won the championship of this event, becoming the oldest snowboard gold medalist in the history of the Winter Olympics, and even broke the record set by cross-country skier Randall in 2018 to become the oldest female gold medalist at the Winter Olympics.