Don’t worry, it’s doubtful it will land you in jail, even in Russia, where today Jenny Jones used one as part of her routine to land Britain’s first ever Olympic medal on snow, in the Women’s Slopestyle Snowboarding.   It is just one of the myriad of terms associated with the sport that we will all, no doubt, become familiar with over the next few days.   If you haven’t seen slopestyle yet, try and imagine doing a gymnastics routine in the middle of a ski-jump, on one ski, then doing it twice more – all in the same run.

Jenny Jones flies high en route to Bronze

In these days of ultra-protectiveness, we don’t often encounter new sports that provide a true spectacle, but I have to confess that watching the men’s event yesterday was a bit of an adrenaline rush – and that was just on TV.  Listening to the commentators, however,was like encountering a niche art film without subtitles, but at least they seemed to understand what it was all about.  Which is more than can be said for their bosses who pulled a live interview with one of the British competitors, because he said ‘Huck It’ on air.  I looked the term up on a snowboarding website, which is obviously more than they did, and found the definition “uncontrollably throwing yourself into the air without any regard to personal or surrounding safety”.  From what I saw all of the competitors were doing that (see video below), so perhaps the BBC  should apologise to our Olympian for their misunderstanding. Continue Reading