Ståle and Torstein cruising the park on a sunny day.
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Halfpipe snowboarding has been the cool kid of U.S. Olympic sports since it was inaugurated in 1998. It was novel compared to events like alpine skiing, and we had perpetual winner Shaun White to root for. But this year, now that freeskiing is on the big stage, skiers, with their bigger amplitude, more-complicated grabs, and tougher-looking switch tricks, might steal the show from snowboarders.
It’s hard to resist weighing skiing against snowboarding, given that both breeds of athletes compete in the same venue, but a direct comparison is kind of unfair. Even on the same halfpipe, the way riders approach the course, because of … More
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Skiers, snowboarders still riding despite debilitating injuries
When Simon Dumont, one of the winningest halfpipe skiers in the world, stood at the top of the pipe for the final Olympic qualifying event last month, he was hurting and down to just his right anterior cruciate ligament (ACL); he’d blown the left one the day before. He put down a less technical run than he normally does and finished 12th.
That run will probably be his final competitive trip down the halfpipe.
Dumont’s knee injury kept him off the podium, which meant he didn’t have enough points to … More
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