It seems really late to be still naming athletes to the Olympics, which starts in just over 2 weeks, but that’s just what happened yesterday. The 2006 Olympic snowboarding team was announced yesterday. It consists of 16 athletes: eight in halfpipe; five in snowboardcross, which is making its Olympic debut in Turin; and three in parallel giant slalom.
The shoo-ins were Shaun White and Gretchen Bleiler. Defending Olympic champion Kelly Clark also made the team, but defending Champion Ross Powers was unable to make the team.
It is still weird to me that snowboarding is an Olympic sport. It is the equivalent, in my opinion, of skateboarding or surfing being turned into Olympic sports. I think more research is needed. I guess today’s sport that I’ll be explaining will be snowboarding. Maybe it will give me greater respect for a sport that I truly don’t understand.
How can USSA enter 4 athletles to the men and womans halfpipe events along with the men’s snowboardcross and enter only one male and two females to the alpine events. I thought the goal here is to win medals. Three athletes on this Olympic team stand no chance of winning a medal unless the IOC is now giving copper away for fourth place finishes. USSA should be sending the three best competitors in each event.
The goal IS to win medals and that is why there were more athletes sent in the other disiplines than in alpine. the u.s. has extremely strong halfpipe and boardercross riders but our alpine team is not very strong right now. in 2002 only 3 women were sent to salt lake for the halfpipe competition while a large alpine team was sent.
how can you say that snowboarding shouldn’t be a olympic sport? it is jsut as hard as any of the other sports. you try to snowboard and then tell me that you don’t think that it should be a sport.
There are a lot of things that are difficult that I don’t think should be Olympic sports— rock climbing comes immediately to mind, as does the trapeeze and gym wheel, which is popular in Europe. Juggling is difficult. For that matter, calculus is pretty tough. So, there needs to be a different criteria than “difficult”.
But, if you read the rest of this site, you will see that I’ve already recanted about snowboarding as an Olympic sport, so there’s no need to be upset about it.