It might be one of the most popular Winter Olympic sports
around, attracting throngs of cowbell-ringing fans
everywhere it goes.
But did you know that snowboarding was actually
banned by most ski resorts until the 1980s?
All right. Chill out, mate.
Chill out. It's a ski resort. Oh...
So how did snowboarding go from the bad boy of the slopes
to Olympic glory?
(BURNING QUESTIONS)
(HOW SNOWBOARDING CONQUERED THE WINTER OLYMPICS?)
(WINTER GAMES EDITION)
Even though snowboarding is a relatively young sport,
it has a colourful history.
Snowboarding made its Olympic debut in 1998 at Nagano.
Then, there were just two snowboarding events -
giant slalom and halfpipe.
In PyeongChang, there'll be five opportunities
to win medals for both men and women.
Perhaps the most eye-catching of these is the Big Air.
Brand new for PyeongChang, Big Air
is like the last jump in a slope-style course only bigger,
like much bigger.
The one in PyeongChang is 49 metres high.
To put that into context, that's about
as tall as Nelson's Column in London,
which is just a bit smaller than me.
So how does it work?
Boarders fly down a steep ramp that resembles a ski jump.
They then do one big trick as they fly off the jump.
From the moment they fly off the ramp,
the snowboarder has about 2.5 seconds
to impress the judges. That's not a lot of time.
There are not a lot of things you can do in 2.5 seconds,
but here are just some of them.
(BEE FLAPS WINGS 675 TIMES)
(26,125 CANS OF COKE CONSUMED)
(15 NEW HUMANS ARE BORN)
(102,500 FACEBOOK STATUS UPDATES)
(LIGHTNING WILL STRIKE 250 TIMES)
(250,000 CHEMICAL REACTIONS IN EVERY HUMAN CELL)
It's just a little bit less than the current
Rubik's Cube world record,
which currently stands at just over four seconds,
which I will demonstrate for you right now.
Nailed it.
So what are snowboarders thinking about
as they fly through the air with the greatest of ease?
And what are the physics behind pulling off a move like, say,
the triple cork 1620?
In order to execute 4.5 rotations,
all while flipping three times off axis,
the snowboarder requires incredible athletic powers.
But let's break it down even further.
On the approach, the athlete crouches
down low to pick up speed.
It's by increasing his velocity that he gets the biggest air.
As he hits the edge,
the athlete straightens his legs and angles
his upper body towards the tail end of his snowboard.
This initiates the rotation, since there's
no way to do this once he's in the air.
After the first spin, the rider tucks his body
into a ball to increase his angular momentum,
just like figure skaters tuck in their arms
into their bodies.
Around the third flip, the rider might crouch down
and grab the board to help maintain the rotational speed
even longer.
Straightening up for the final 1.5 spins
allows the athlete to slow down and start gauging the time left
until the landing.
And how do they nail that landing?
The answer is saccadic eye movements, obviously,
flicking his gaze over a few reference points
on the landing area.
As he lands, he actually starts looking
in the opposite direction of the spin,
which helps to pull him out of the rotation.
And, finally, to avoid landing on an edge,
the rider must ensure he stomps the landing.
You can certainly see why Big Air
is said to be one of the biggest events in PyeongChang.
But would snowboarding be so popular today if it still
had its original name?
Legend has it that snowboarding began in 1965
when Sherman Poppen - what a name! -
tied two skis together to make a toy
for his daughters.
The new game was dubbed "snurfing",
a hybrid of skiing and surfing.
And it quickly spread.
But perhaps the most famous snowboarder of them
all is actually not a real snowboarder at all.
Fictional super spy James Bond performed a snowboarding chase
in A View To A Kill.
And - sorry to break it to you - it wasn't really
Roger Moore doing the snowboarding.
It was legendary snowboarder Tom Sims,
who was his stunt double.
In fact, seeing James Bond on the snowboard
is credited with helping to popularize the sport
and help it break into the mainstream.
As James Bond would say, "You only live once."