Chloe Kim won the gold medal in the women's snowboarding halfpipe competition at the PyeongChang Winter Olympics with flying colors and by just flying. I definitely noticed that her ability to surf the snow far exceeded the competition. She was swifter, higher and stronger, just like the Olympic credo. It was a special moment for her, not just to win a gold medal at seventeen years of age, but to win it on the snow and soil of her parents' homeland. (That's right, another child of immigrants - are you listening, Tom Cotton?)
Of course, on the men's side, there's still Shaun White. :-)
Most snowboarders perform the same, and it's hard to tell one from the other watching it on TV. Not Shaun White. You know it's him from how he files in the air. And after a disappointing run in Sochi in 2014, White distinguished himself in the qualifying runs, handling the course as if he were already going for the gold medal. And he's 31.
Chloe Kim and Shaun White are not part of American snowboarding. They are American snowboarding. They're pretty much global snowboarding too. The other halfpipe competitors in both the men's and women's competition are just imitators.
Those halfpipe imitations put me on the blink. ;-)
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment