Kitchen Conversations #2Progression vs. Regression
I managed to avoid most snowboard competitions in person this year, and opted to watch them on TV. I like watching snowboarding on TV because it is warm, comfortable, you can turn down the announcers when they are annoying and no there’s AP guy in your way trying to GTS. Anyway, since I was watching from my couch and could actually see what was happening in the halfpipe, I actually formulated an opinion about the state of competitive snowboarding in the halfpipe. And that opinion is that spinning any more than 900 degrees looks ugly. Sure, they are a few notable exceptions: Danny Davis, Shaun White, Anti Autti, Mason Aguirre—when they spin 1080s it still looks good. They grab their board and don’t flail around in the air. And that’s cool because it’s always great to see people doing something they are really good at. The problem is that the majority of the other pro snowboarders don’t look good when they spin 1080s. Sometime in the middle of last season though, someone decided that back-to-back 10s were necessary to win a halfpipe contest. So now everybody does them, whether they should be or not. A wise man once said, “Some people are good at some things and they are not good at others. I’m not good a heart surgery, so I don’t do heart surgery.” So here’s what I’m thinking: if you’re not good at 1080s, don’t do them. And for the love of god, don’t attempt a 1260 or 1440, even if you are “good” at them! No one can make those moves look good, and being dizzy when you land can’t really be that fun either. Yes, it is possible to do a 1260 in your run; I saw it with my very own eyes. It didn’t look good. But the worst part is now everyone knows it’s possible. And whether they want to or not, everybody better learn how to do a 1260 because next year, you’re probably going to need one in your run to win. So what if snowboard contests look like ballet recitals, shit’s gotta progress, right? Twenty-two foot halfpipe walls, back-to-back 10s, 1260s, the illustrious 1440, they might be “progressing” the sport, but to what? Personally, I like the version of snowboard contests where people do tricks that look good and get scored highly because of it. Of course, snowboarding is trying to appeal to a mass audience now, I get it. And some dude in Iowa doesn’t know the difference between a slow, fluid grabbed, spin and a hucked, jerky, ugly one. All they know is the second guy spun around more times and therefore must be better. Anyone can understand that logic, so by putting snowboarding on network TV, that will be the result. The judges have to judge more rotations higher because that will encourage people to do them, even if it looks ugly. So get used to it, cause spinning to win seems to be here to stay. Maybe though, and this is just an idea, we could just stop trying to force the sport onto some attainable plain so NASCAR fans are impressed by it and let everyone go back to doing runs that look good. -BG
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