Snowboarders rule, man - how awesome is that?
BY BRYAN BURWELL
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Posted on Tue, Feb. 14, 2006
BARDONECCHIA, Italy - When the gnarly dudes and totally stoked dudettes of American snowboarding took their first uncertain steps into the Olympic mainstream eight years ago, these radical athletic outsiders admittedly were being stretched from one end of the halfpipe to the other by this cultural tug of war.
What do you do when you move into a new neighborhood surrounded by an ultra-conservative Olympic establishment that didn't exactly welcome you with open arms, and your own apprehensive community, that considering its own ultimate counterculture ethos, wasn't exactly convinced that it belonged here, either?
The answer, apparently, is to turn up your iPod full blast, slip on some really funky parkas and fly down a mountain that looks like a snow-covered skateboard park rockin' and shockin' the world, dude.
As we stand here at the base of this breathtaking Alpine mountain a few kilometers from the French border, it's almost comical to think that the American snowboarders ever dealt with any major Olympic angst. Because after two consecutive Winter Games and a bag full of gleaming Olympic hardware, the snowboarders and their Generation X sport have become the coolest, most successful and telegenically pleasing athletes on the U.S. Olympic winter team.
I want to do a "backside 900," and I'm not even sure what it is. Twenty-four hours after Shaun White led a 1-2 American finish in the men's halfpipe competition, the snowboard chicks took over the pipe, barely missing a 1-2-3 sweep. I don't know what you're watching back home on the NBC Olympic prime-time shows, but you ought to be watching these kids, because they're the slightly wacky, totally charming and wonderfully charismatic kings and queens of the Turin Games, and here's the reason:
The Macarena and the mystical, magical lure of fresh powder.
This is how Hannah Teter and Gretchen Bleiler, your newest gold and silver medalists of the 20th Winter Olympics, got into the proper competitive frame of mind for Monday afternoon's women's halfpipe finals.
"Gretchen and I were doing the Macarena up there to get loose," giggled the totally stoked Teter, the 19-year-old Olympic gold medalist from Belmont, Vt., who channels both Robin Williams and Jeff Spicoli with her unconscious comic rifts and surfer girl patois.
"And then, 20 minutes before the practice runs for the finals, we went out to get some fresh powder (new snow) on the mountains," said Bleiler, the 21-year-old from Snowmass Village, Colo. "We sneaked onto a part of the mountain that was blocked off by the military (for security purposes). So we went under the ropes - sorry - and man, we found some great powder ... and I fell and almost busted my nose, too."
Bleiler giggled, sheepishly rolled her eyes and shrugged her shoulders. Then when someone asked her why in the world the two best women snowboarders in the world would risk an injury mere moments from the biggest run of their lives, Bleiler looked at him almost incredulously.
"This is snowboarding, man," she said.
How perfect. Everything you need to know about the counterculture mentality and popularity of snowboarding was wrapped up in those two scenes. Have fun, break the rules and show no fear.
Part of the fun of being around these Gen X superheroes is that this all feels so very familiar, like you're having a conversation with your teenager's best friends. You know the conversation I'm talking about; the one where the yawning generation gap is exposed because you only vaguely understand what the heck they're talking about.
Here, in one unconscious deep snowboard-lingo rift, is how Bleiler described her final silver-medal-winning halfpipe routine:
"I dropped into a backside 5, wanted to go as big as I could and tweak my rap 5. ... I went to a backside undie (note to the generationally impaired: I think she's talking about a gnarly snowboarding move, not a midcourse wedgie with favorite lingerie), then a frontside 3 and a cab 5."
Well, of course you did.
After Bleiler's run, Teter found herself on top of the world. She was standing just outside the gates at the top of the halfpipe run with her iPod pumping out some sort of funky, grunge-reggae thing called "Let's Communicate" by a band called Strive Roots.
She was the last girl on the mountain, and because Teter already knew she had the gold medal locked up, she flashed a wide, satisfied grin.
"I was up there thinkin', 'Hey, victory lap!'" said Teter. "Oooooooh, yeah!"
So she jogged around on her iPod, found her favorite tune, rose up on the board and looked out at the rest of the world and started groovin' to a beat only she could hear. She urged the rowdy crowd below to join her party, then did a quirky little dance move on her board, then slid down the pipe toward Olympic history.
By early Monday evening, there Teter was standing on top of another peak, the Medals Plaza platform in downtown Turin, doing the only thing that a snowboarding dudette should do at a moment like this:
She struck a wide-legged boarder lean on the top step, doing a double-fisted finger point to another joyful audience, flaunted her new golden Olympic bling-bling and started dancing to another rather funky beat that only Hannah Teter could hear.
Oooooh, yeah.
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