In Shaun White’s early days riding snowboards, the sport was so new that his mom was still getting the hang of things after a lifetime of skiing.
Among Cathy White’s rules: If Shaun, his brother and sister wanted mom to accompany them down the mountain, they had to ride “switch” — backward — so she could keep up.
That, in part, is how a snowboarding champion was born.
“All winter, we rode switch, all day, every day,” said White, the three-time Olympic gold medalist. “We’re falling and figuring it out. By the end of the season, I was so proficient at riding switch. It was a real gift my mom gave me.”
Though snowboarding loves to flaunt its massive jumps and daring flips, it’s the ability to spin four ways — riding forward and backward, then spinning either clockwise or counterclockwise from either direction — that is considered one of the sport’s holy grails.
When the medals are handed out at the Milan Cortina Games, the riders who do this the best — or at all — will almost certainly be wearing them.
It’s as difficult as it is underappreciated by casual viewers or people who’ve never tried it. Chloe Kim essentially spent four years mastering this art in the leadup to the Beijing Olympics. Her ability to pull it off under pressure was key to her second gold medal four years ago.
Scotty James also leans into the so-called “technical” side of riding. The Aussie, with Olympic silver and bronze medals, upped the ante at this year’s X Games when he became the first rider to land consecutive backside 1440-degree jumps — one riding forward, the other riding switch. “Backside” means starting the spin with your back facing down the hill.
The 31-year-old James says he’s had to adjust and go bigger in the leadup to Milan Cortina, but that working on spinning awkward ways in different directions is “what’s going to fill my cup up while I’m doing the run.”
“It’s the switch McTwists and all these different variations and backside riding, etc. etc.,” he said, name checking one of the many snowboard tricks that sound cool, even though only the experts really know what they mean. “That’s what actually gets me excited and gets me out of bed every day.”
It’s a right-handed pitcher throwing left-handed. But harder
Ask any elite snowboarder to put into perspective the difficulty of riding backward and then, say, taking off spinning facing up the hill while ascending the 22-foot-tall wall of the halfpipe, and they will give some version of “it’s a right-handed pitcher trying to throw left-handed” or “it’s a right-handed person trying to sign their name with their left hand.”
Actually, it’s harder than that. Maybe Kelly Clark, the 2002 Olympic halfpipe champ who added bronze medals in 2010 and 2014, put it best.
“It’s not like signing your name with your left hand,” she said. “It’s like trying to write an essay with your left hand and then pass it off as normal. It’s, write an essay, tell everyone you did it with your dominant hand and see if you can pass it off.”
Switch riding, backside spins are not easily done or understood
White was among a few interviewed for this story who said he was actually glad someone asked him about this subject.
“It’s kind of like, if you know, you know,” he said. “But if you don’t know, you just say, ‘Oh, that’s cool, he spun this way.’ But really, it’s, ”No, that was switch.”
It’s hard for non-experts to tell because the front and back of a snowboard look so similar. It’s easier to suss out the backward vs. forward motion in freeskiing, where the concept is the same, and every bit as difficult, but not as tricky to detect because it’s easy to tell if someone’s going backward on their skis.
David Wise won the second of his two Olympic gold medals in 2018 when he became the first halfpipe freeskier to put down double corks — two head-over-heels flips — while spinning in all four directions on the same run.
In explaining the magnitude of the accomplishment that day, Jonny Moseley — the freestyle skier who set the bar for progression in action sports in the early 2000s — said, simply: “It’s like learning two sports.”
Eileen Gu, looking to add to her three Olympic medals with three more in Italy, can spin both ways on the halfpipe, the slopestyle course and the big air jump, where snowboarders and skiers get three chances and are required to spin different ways on at least two jumps.
“It feels unnatural. It’s literally called ‘unnatural’ direction, and that’s kind of what it feels like,” Gu said. “Your two sides never feel the same. If you don’t ski for a long time and you come back, there’s always one side that’s substantially easier. The other side you just have to work harder on.”
Triples, doubles and ‘big air’ still draw oohs and ahhs
The winning trick in men’s halfpipe at the last Olympics was the triple cork by Ayumu Hirano of Japan, who beat White and several of his countrymen in a years-long race to perfect three head-over-heels flips, then land it as part of a complete run.
Fast forward four years and some riders will attempt not one, but two triple corks in their routines.
“You’re going to see back-to-back triples,,” said Rick Bower, the director of the U.S. snowboard program who also is the personal coach for Kim.
Anyone who can pull that off will probably win, assuming they can land three or four other complex tricks as they make their way down that halfpipe.
Most of those will involve riding switch or spinning in an unnatural way. The same goes for the slopestyle and big air, where massive jumps are only part of the winning formula.
“It’s a big part of putting together runs,” said Canadian snowboarder Mark McMorris, who has won multiple X Games and three Olympic bronze medals in slopestyle. “You need to have switch stuff in there and it’s damn hard. I’m actually thankful we ride both ways in snowboarding. It spices things up and it’s an impressive thing to be able to do.”
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