Part rollerderby! Part snowboarding! It's my little guilty pleasure: Snowboard Cross! And Canada's Mike Robertson got a silver in it. Woo! Seriously, the track looks like so much fun I want to grab my board, hop on a plane and have a go myself.
Once upon a time when I was a wee little girl, I idolized the dominant Italian alpine champion, Alberto Tomba. Partly because I loved his name. But he was just so smooth at skiing. He made the giant slalom look so effortless with the way he would cut through the snow and track like it was butter. I started skiing when I was four, on the Beaconsfield golf course. And since my parents wouldn't let me become the next Patrick Roy, I wanted to be like Tomba: I wanted to be an Olympic downhill skiier. But there was the usual complications in obtaining that dream. Like money for those racing programs. Those were the days before government subsidies for entering children into sports. So I was content with winning free chocolate bars, gym bags, food coupons, and such. Also I was the fasted in my class when our teacher challenged us to do a special marked off distance and made the most amount of turns in the least amount of time. Small victories!
As I got better at skiing, I went for the moguls. Obviously I can't do the flips or too big an air because I'm way too afraid of heights to fly like that. But I can do the Jean-Luc Brassard cossack jump, like pretty much every kid in Canada went out and tried to do the moment he won gold. BIG congratulations to Alex Bilodeau on beating that malware selling faussie jerk robot for Canada's first gold on home soil! Jen Heil with the silver! Though I must say I was way more impressed with little Chloe's run. If she could boost her speed, she will be a gold medal winner one of these days!
I have long given up skiing though. I got bored with it. I was a teacher. Eventually I would just leave my poles in the car and ski without them to challenge myself more. It was like a hybrid ski-snowboard style. And then the cold boots got on my nerves. I've dumped skiing and I'm now a full-blown snowboarder. Nothing fancy though. Unfortunately I had to sacrifice my love of moguls and doing speece down steep-hard trails (though I can do it a bit with a snowboard, just not as fast as before).
You don't know freedom until you've found the perfect trail, with the perfect snow, with no one on it, where you can carve giant S-turns.
However I have to be very careful. I've never, ever broken anything in all my years skiing. My mom broke her leg in the silliest flatest place on the hill and she has no idea how she managed that. My brother broke his arm on our first try out on the hill...on the baby hill. He just plunked over rather harmlessly. Me? I flipped out of control once and landed on my head on the ice. But I got a hard head. I broke my helmet and never wore it again, but I really landed more on my face. Slight concussion. That's it. But if I break my arm, I won't be able to work, so I can't be crazy on stuff like jumps or difficult trails. And mostly it's other people running into me from behind that I've since endured in snowboarding...
It's the risk of winter sports. You have to be aware of everything and anything because anything can cause you great injury or death, even with a helmet on. (Helmets don't stop you from breaking your neck). Such is life when you want to be the next Alberto Tomba.