Power of Caring
  presented by Cigna

In honor of the single worst debut by a sport in Olympic history, please memorize the following snowboarding terms and have them tattooed somewhere extremely rad.

Animal. 1) Muppet character who was official mascot of the U.S. snowboarding team. 2) Direct relative of many members of the U.S. snowboarding team.

Goofy. 1) Riding a snowboard with your right foot forward. 2) Canadian giant slalom snowboard racer Ross Rebagliati, who a) won snowboarding's first gold medal; b) lost it after testing positive for marijuana; c) claimed he had only inhaled the secondhand smoke of his snowboarding friends; d) got the medal back on appeal; and then e) said, "I'm not changing my friends.... I might have to wear a gas mask from now on, but, whatever." Well, as long as he's sorry.

Half-pipe. 1) The two-walled snow structure in which snowboarders ride. 2) Essential measurement at Canadian snowboarders' parties.

Half-assed. What the Olympic competition was, considering a) the best snowboarder in the world, Norway's Terje Haakonsen, skipped the Games and went surfing at Laguna Beach, Calif.; and b) it was run by skiing officials, not snowboarding officials, which is like having Augusta National Golf Club run a Martin Luther King Day parade.

Drop-in. 1) The start of a half-pipe ride. 2) What Japanese police did to Rebagliati at his hotel room, looking for marijuana. They then interrogated him for more than six hours before letting him go. "Just a procedural thing," Rebagliati said afterward.

Five to seven years. Procedural thing for conviction of possession of marijuana in Japan.

Suck. 1) Not riding your snowboard well, as in this quote from American half-pipe bronze medalist Shannon Dunn: "The Japanese are cool. You can suck, and they'll still yell for you." 2) The commentary of CBS snowboarding expert Jim (the Ripper) Rippey, who misused the adjective good 1,287 times in two broadcasts and had this analysis during American Chris Klug's giant slalom run: "Yeah, Chris! C'mon, buddy!"

Whack. Very bad, as in the way the American snowboarders felt about their closetful of U.S. Olympic team garments: polyester slacks, Junior League pumps and conservative blazers that they wouldn't wear to a fire. "It's whack," said one, "but it's free!"

Rivalry. A word apparently not in the vocabulary of 19-year-old American half-pipe bronze medalist Ross Powers, who was asked who his chief opponents were. "Uh, I really don't have a riralry, rivralry—I mean a ribal ... aw, f–––." To which teammate Todd Richards, sitting next to him, said, "Well put."

The Bomb. 1) Exceptionally good. 2) What the lobby of the Shiga Kogen Prince Hotel in Yamanouchi Town appeared to have been hit with after a little snowboarders' soiree, resulting in Austrian boarder Martin Freinademetz's being kicked out of the competition. "We had a party, we had fun," he said. "Something got broken." Well put.

Tunes. 1) Last-minute adjustments to snowboards. 2) Music chosen by Olympic riders for the half-pipe competition, including selections by Hallucinogen and Bob Marley (most of which mentioned "ganja"), Biscuits for Smut by Helmet, and a lot of others that had the word Powers used in his press conference.

Whistler, British Columbia. 1) Hometown of Rebagliati. 2) Cause of Rebagliati's problems, according to a Canadian Olympic official, who said the snowboarder's positive test was a by-product of living in Whistler, where "marijuana is four times more potent" than in other areas and "most of the young people use it."

Outie. To depart, as in this exchange: Olympic snowboarder A, "I'm outie, dude." Olympic snowboarder B, "Where you goin', dude?" Olympic snowboarder A, "Whistler, dude!"

Big air. 1) To gain great height on a half-pipe trick. 2) Very bad decision, as in "Juan Antonio Samaranch made very big air letting snowboarding into the Olympics this soon."

Kanbayashi. The mountain park about 25 miles outside Nagano, home to not only the Olympic snowboarders but also the famous wild monkeys that bathe in the natural hot springs there. They really were amazing—howling at the top of their lungs, smelling a little funny and doing rude things in public. The monkeys were interesting, too.

Tell us what you think. Sound off on the CNN/SI Message Boards.

Past Editions of Life of Reilly

Issue date: February 23, 1998