JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
The Winter Olympics kick off this week in Italy, and Olympic fans know snowboarding is rad - the concentration, the speed, the height.
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UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER #1: Two coaches that are going to be giving her a slingshot in. Kokomo not going as big. Here she is.
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UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER #1: Frontside 1,620 (ph). Oh, my gosh. You can lose it. You can absolutely lose it.
UNIDENTIFIED ANNOUNCER #2: History...
SUMMERS: But to the uninitiated, like me, it can often feel like there's a language barrier.
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UNIDENTIFIED HOST #1, HOST:
You go in and you do, like, almost, like, a front-side crooked grind to fakie. How did that come to be?
UNIDENTIFIED HOST #2, HOST:
Funny story. I'm hiking with Devun Walsh, and he's hitting it. Think about that. Like, you're riding halfpipe box with Devun Walsh in '98 in Crested Butte. Like...
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SUMMERS: Those are the hosts of "The Bomb Hole Podcast," but what about the rest of us normies? To help us with some snowboarding lingo, we called up an expert.
TRICIA BYRNES: So snowboarding has a lot of different grabs. So where you put your hand on your snowboard is a different grab and each of those grabs has a different name. And that's, like, sort of the basic stuff. A lot of that - those names have been taken from skateboard culture.
SUMMERS: That's snowboarding pioneer Tricia Byrnes. She competed in the 2002 Salt Lake Winter Games. Now, this is the time to get out your notes app because she's going to break down the midair tricks and subtle hand movements that boost the scores.
BYRNES: OK. So a crippler is when you do, like, a - go up on your toe edge on your front side wall, and you do a back flip. A cork is a sort of rotated flip. The switch McTwist would be going backwards and doing a backside, basically front flip with a rotation, but you're doing it backwards. A regular McTwist is a backside while front flip landing regular and a rotation there.
SUMMERS: There are also staples like the halfpipe.
BYRNES: Twenty-two feet tall, and then they're going, like, another 15, 20 feet out of it. What makes it perfect is if it's, like, perfectly dished so there's almost no flat bottom in it, and they're just, like, riding this literally half of a pipe.
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BYRNES: You're just really thinking about keeping a clean edge, going as fast as you can and then waiting for that lift to pop off and go as big as you can because amplitude is what we all kind of live for - that, like, huge air and going as big as you can.
SUMMERS: Oh, Tricia, I mean, we all live for the amplitude. As the Games kick off, Byrnes says to pay close attention to the rotations. She knows a whole lot of people may feel inspired to get into snowboarding, but she advises that slow and easy is the best way to get huge air.
BYRNES: Just get out there and have fun. You know, take a lesson and just feel that feeling of learning how to turn and carve and jump, and then ride powder. And the powder's - like, the Olympics are amazing, but powder is what it's all about, or just getting out there with your friends and riding and having a good time and just enjoying the mountains and that moment of being on your board.
SUMMERS: I have to say, I'm just going to take your word for it.
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