“I don’t think there is anything critical to say about this course, I think it’s perfect…” – Canadian Snowboarder Maxence Parrot
That was what Parrot told me at the bottom of the “controversial” slopestyle course, on Thursday, after he scorched the field with one of his best runs ever.
The course at Rosa Khutor became “controversial,” if you can call it that, after a spate of early injuries during training runs, culminating in snowboarding star Shaun White pulling out of the event because he hurt his wrist and is still hoping for another gold medal in his specialty — the half pipe.
READ MORE: U.S. snowboarder Shaun White withdraws from Olympic slopestyle event
So, we had the somewhat bizarre sight Thursday morning of a small horde of paunchy, mostly middle-aged reporters climbing over themselves to badger our elite young athletes with endless, cringe inducing questions about safety.
“Is it safe? Is it safe?” they would repeat like a reprise of Laurence Olivier’s demented scene with the dental drill in Marathon Man.
It seemed to be one of those moments when the media had a story line they didn’t want to abandon – reality be damned.
So, is slopestyle snowboarding “safe?” The answer is no. Absolutely not.
In the same way that skydiving isn’t “safe”, rodeo bull riding isn’t “safe” and the men’s and women’s downhill event isn’t “safe.”
“Safe,” it turns out, is a very relative term.
WATCH: GoPro footage from the helmet cam of Russian Olympian Alexey Sobolev shows just how intense the slopestyle course is
What happens at big, mega profile events like this is the sensibilities of the media commentators compete to define what things like “safe” mean.
“Safe,” to a lot them, is usually something like what people at a suburban school board meeting would think.
It’s probably not what a 22-year-old extreme sports competitor thinks — and he most certainly wouldn’t stop going off big jumps because risk-adverse office dwellers would be too afraid to do it.
In fact, that’s part of why the does it.
Now, that’s not to say the question of safety is totally off base though.
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While Canada’s men didn’t seem to have a problem with the slopestyle snowboard course, they are for the most part the world’s best and know how to handle the big jumps on a course like this.
But what about some of the less experienced competitors, say a boarder ranked 60th in the world who doesn’t compete on the international circuit as much and feels the need to push it because this is the Olympics?
That’s where things could get dangerous.
Suddenly the media’s fixation on safety starts to make more sense.
The bottom line is sports like slopestyle, both snowboard and skiing, are new to the Olympics.
They were formally known as extreme sports. It may take a while for folks to get used to what extreme is really means.
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