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What's that you say? Why hate on snowboarding in the olympics? Oh, you silly little child, just sit right there and by the time I'm through with you you'll be hating with the best of them. We're gonna break it down into a few sub-categories of hate throughout the week but let's get started with a little background and cover the basics to make sure we're all on the same page going in here.
Image via hackneygazette.co.ukFirst, a quick history of snowboarding in the olympics (written completely off the top of my head with no fact checking whatsoever).
Snowboarding has been in the olympics since the 1998 Nagano games. In the years leading up to our big moment in the spotlight (sigh) there was lots of speculation and discussion on who would be in charge of taking our sport onto the global stage. To much chagrin, it eventually emerged that the, gasp, FIS (federation international de ski) – a goddamn ski federation! – would be put in charge, completely ignoring and fucking over the reigning governing body, the ISF (International Snowboard Federation), which quickly was forced to fold up shop. This is the biggest source of snowboarding-in-the-olympics related hate and one of the greatest wrong-doing in the history of the world. (Too far? nope)
Snowboarding in the olympics' debut will always be remembered for one thing. The first dude to win a gold medal – hard-booter Ross Rebagliati – had his gold medal taken away, and then returned, when he was busted for having weed in his system. While Ross flashed his baby-blues and feigned innocence with a weak "I must have been at a party where there was weed or something" defence, everyone who has ever smoked a joint with Ross – and that is a shit ton of people, trust me – lit one up in honor of the most fitting introduction snowboarders could ever have hoped for to the world stage.
Fast forward 16 years – that's five olympics for those of you counting – and slopestyle has been added to the olympic program in addition to the original disciplines of halfpipe, a bunch of racing events no one watches and snowboard-cross. Interesting hate point here. Many snowboarders feel like slope was just added to boost the tv ratings of a – let's face it – rapidly declining in interest event. The fact that the slope qualifiers are a day before the opening ceremonies, thus making slopestyle one of the first medals of the entire games sure doesn't do much to dispel that line of thinking. They don't give a fuck about us, why should we give a fuck about them?
The Terje factor. When it was announced that snowboarding was olympic-bound, you could almost literally feel the collective eyeballs of the entire snowboard world slowly shift to Norway to see what Terje Haakonsen had to say about it. For those of you too young enough to remember, or maybe you just don't give a shit cause you hate snowboarding, Terje was, is and always will be the greatest snowboarder to ever live. His style and grace on a snowboard will forever be unmatched and he was absolutely the one to beat and the favourite for pipe gold going into the games. And what did he do? Only the single greatest thing a snowboarder has ever done on that scale and world stage. He slowly extended his middle finger to the IOC and the FIS and boycotted what many others were busy trying to convince everyone was the greatest thing to happen to snowboarding since metal edges. That single act forever defined what it meant to stand up for snowboarding's right to not be exploited to the general public, something that is as poignant now as it was back then. Basically nothing has changed since then, and neither has Terje's opinions … for those of you interested, there is a great article on Whitelines right now HERE about it where Terje speaks his thoughts 16 years later. Terje's out, I'm out.
Who cares about competitive snowboarding anyways? Many will have you believe competition is an essential part of life, but isn't that precisely what's so rad about snowboarding as opposed to, say, tennis? It's the freedom and inability to describe precisely what it is that draws so many of us to become so obsessed with the sport that is it's greatest asset, yet putting rules and regulations to that strips away it's pureness. Sure, there are a select few who dream of winning medals and all that shit, but that has to be a super small percentage of riders. For the rest of us, it's dreams of deep pow turns, steep lines, perfectly spaced tree runs and mellow park laps with our homies that keep us smiling in our sleep. Fuck snowboard comps, that shit is lame!
Russia, ugh. Anti-gay sentiment. A bloated budget with unheard of levels of corruption. Unfinished venues. Putin is a douche. People being hired to shoot dogs. Do I really need to continue? Take away all the sports and you'd still have enough reason to hold a two-week hate-fest on Russia just for the way it conducts itself. And the nerve it has to be on a completely fucking opposite time schedule as us is infuriating to say the least. The snowboard slope finals are at 3 in the goddamn morning. Let me sleep you damn ruskies!
Christ, I just looked up and realized this thing is getting a bit long. As much fun as I'm having here I'll skip to the end and tell you the main reason I choose to hate on snowboarding being in the olympics. With so many obvious reasons to not support it, the discussion inevitably comes around to one key pro-olympics point. Someone will tell you that this is just too great an opportunity to pass up on and is the single biggest way to get snowboarding in front of new eyeballs and thus our greatest chance of rejuvenating our sport with new blood. Well to them I simply ask if they really think some dude sitting on his couch in Alabama, or Africa for that matter, is really likely to be so inspired by whatever it is Shaun White is doing with his hair these days to go out and buy a snowboard and twenty lift tickets a year? Eyeballs are one thing but it's kinda pointless if those people are as likely to take up snowboarding as I am to start figure skating. A few minutes of tv time once every four years does not make for any true impact on our sport. Period. And for that reason, in my eyes at least, it will never make sense for us to basically bend over and let the powers that be have their way with us.
So there you have it. My first round of rambling, and most likely incoherent, thoughts on what is coming in the next few weeks – whether we like it or not. Stay tuned for a few more of these, where we will attempt to dive into some of the individual factors that are going to make this week the hate-ey-est you might ever see around here.
