About 13 years ago a game was invented for Nintendo 64 called "1080 Snowboarding." At the time the Winter X Games were only a couple of years old and snowboarding was just hitting the mainstream. The 1080, or 3 full spins, was an unheard of trick. The 900 was the big deal at the time. In fact, I'm watching the Winter X Games right now and the announcers just said that they think one of the female half pipe competitors has a 1080 in her bag of tricks. It appears as though the trick is still a myth in the female world.
Who would have thought at the time that just a few short years later we'd be talking about people turning 1620's (4 1/2 spins) during big air competitions. To my knowledge no snowboarder has hit the 1620 realm but I've been watching skiers do it all night long. The evolution of this sport blows my mind. I've been snowboarding since I was 15 years old. For the record, that means I've been snowboarding for 15 years. For half of my life I've spent a good amount of my weekends on the mountain. Even after all of those years I still don't do tricks. I'll hop over a jump from time to time but that's about as far as I go. I can't even fathom getting enough speed and hitting a jump at the right angle in order to launch myself into the air and spin more than 3 times. It's absolute insanity.
I'm sure there are a lot of people out there that still don't consider these people to be athletes. Those people need to check their egos at the door and get over it. If we call race car drivers, golfers and poker players athletes, these skiers and snowboarders are clearly at a higher level. Jimmie Johnson may be able to win 5 Nascar championships in a row but I'd like to see him strap a slab of wood on his feet and launch his body into the air. It's a lot different than sitting on his butt in a car for a few hours while driving in a circle. Sorry. It's not a circle, it's an oval.
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