Snowboardcross

I spent most of the evening last night on the sofa watching Olympic action. My favorite event out of last night's offerings was "snowboardcross." The sport is a hybrid of snowboard racing and motorcross, where a foursome of boarders fly around turns, over jumps and through straightaways in a race to the finish line. Settling in to it, I thought, "Where, oh where, have I seen this before ... and ad nauseam?" Of course! It's Brian's SSX snowboarding video games come to life! Having established why I have a frightfully accurate idea of how this sport is to be raced properly, I sat back and enjoyed adding my own expertise to the race coverage ... of a sport that has kept me ass-to-the-snow every time I tried it.
My favorite part of the whole thing was how the commentators kept trying to settle down the "people at home" by continually explaining that, "Snowboardcross is a dangerous sport, and the racers do make contact. So should you see them bumping, THAT'S ALRIGHT, because it's part of the sport. DO NOT BE ALARMED if they run into each other. They understand that they have to continually jockey for their positions. That's all a part of this FAST AND DANGEROUS new Olympic sport, called snowboardcross." I swear, if they weren't cracking me up so much with their dire warnings and death-is-eminent predictions, I'd have muted them. All the same, it was nice to see the Americans kick butt and take home the gold.