Kevin's family has set up a Facebook page where they let us know how he's recovering. 20,000 people have joined in just a few days.
Then ABC News stepped in with a story about how dangerous snowboarding is and how the IOC who in their minds are "the leaders of this sport" need to evaluate how they get less injuries in this dangerous sport. I, obviously, got pretty upset by watching yet another tool on tv talking about snowboarding without having a clue what she's talking about. This wouldn't happen in any other "traditional" sport, trust me.
Not that I expect much else from people working with sports on national tv. Heck ESPN doesn't even know what they are doing with the X-Games and they've owned and operated it for 15 years or something and they STILL don't get it.
The olympics is, in my mind, about the best performances in each sport. This isn't the case in snowboard, for a number of reasons.
Reason 1: The Swedish olympic (or national team who are supposed to find and support the best snowboarders in the country) team for example havn't supported the best riders. I mean in the last olympics they got €2,000,000 or something to get some good riders to the olympics. I could have saved Lexmark or whoever paid for it (hopefully it wasn´t taxpayers) that money since no Swedish person could have gotten top 10 in Torino even if half the people in the contest fell. The best riders from Sweden, like Ingemar, Hampus, Jakob, Chris, Johan etc never got any backing (of relevance) by the Swedish national team to grow as snowboarders. Not that they (well Ingemar could have been a podium contender) were olympic material, but that didn´t stop the Norwegian national team to help the likes of Mikkel, Torstein, Fredrik, Andeas etc to become better riders.
Reason 2: Halfpipe doesn´t show who the best snowboarder is. It´s probably the easiest discipline to judge and pretty interesting for the endemic viewer who doesn´t know/care about what snowboarding is.
Yes, boardercross and slalom are easier to judge, but I don´t consider the slalom people to be snowboarders. They are skiers on a narrow snowboard with ski boots, with skier mentality.
And even if halfpipe did determine who the best snowboarder was the IOC definitely aren´t the best ones to portray it.
Just take the Vancouver halfpipe.. not the best resort / location to have it. The mountain doesn´t like snowboarders and if it rains I bet they will still force the riders to drop in.
Does skiers get that treatment? Eh, no.
Ok, Shaun White is a great snowboarder. Maybe the best. But he´s not on my top 10 list for snowboarders I like to see.
Same with Travis Rice. Some might say he´s the best, but he´s not on my top 10 of riders I like to see come down a mountain.
I´m not saying I´m right because there is no right or wrong. But snowboarders I like watching are, Gigi Ruf, Nicolas Muller, Jussi Oksanen, Jake Blauvelt, Devun Walsh, Travis Parker, Hampus Mosesson, JP Solberg and others. They probably can´t physically do what Rice and White does, but imho you can´t categorize snowboarding like you can figure skaters. The IOC and 90% of the people watching the olympics will never get that and that´s ok. But it´s not ok when ABC News put this bitch Christine Brennan on tv to talk about snowboarding. And it´s not ok for the X-Games to crown the gold medalist by having Americans text in their votes before the riders even drop in to do their trick. So basically I´m fucked for even thinking that someone who has a suit job will ever understand my pov, which is a healty pov, cause I know better than them.
Some people created a Facebook group against this ABC News bitch. Feel free to join.
http://www.facebook.com/group.php?v=wall&ref=share&gid=240255262381
Here are three emails that were sent to her, click to enlarge.
