so much this, it happens whenever an orange name has a controversial opinion, suddenly that opinion becomes the only right answer. Happened with Into The Mind too.
Now on to my real point, the reason Logan Imlach, esteemed orange name and the current shepherd in this thread, is wrong.
What the fuck did I expect? I expect Bob Costas to at least research the sport he chooses to talk about seeing as that is his job. He is supposed to be an informed commentator and reporter to help the masses understand what is going on in front of them. The average American knows just about nothing involving the olympics, summer or winter. Outside of events that are big on their own (basketball, soccer, tennis, hockey), the public is pretty clueless whether its slopestyle or shot put. Bobs job is to help the public understand the rules, the competitors, and the individual sport as a whole. This is him not doing his job. He is being lazy. The reason the public’s opinion of skiing is that we are a bunch of X-treme adrenaline junkie's living on the edge is a lack of education, and it is Bob’s job to at least begin educating the viewers to the point where they can watch and understand the event, and he does it with every other olympic sport i’ve seen him talk about.
Yes the beginning of freeskiing was a bit jackass, a bit extreme, and pretty dangerous. That is not where we are now. Even if Costas DOES know who Shane McConkey and Glen Plake are, that is not the side of skiing we as a sport have chosen to present to the world. Even people like Henrik understand this, if he was truly a jackass he would be hucking spread eagle backies in the nude during x-games finals, but he’s not. He is doing his best to win a competitive event, and that is the difference between our roots and where we are now. I’m not saying one is better than the other, simply stating the reality of today. Think of skier-x, I don’t recall hearing Costas referring to that as jackass, but its roots are more jackassey than slopestyle. It has grown and matured as a discipline just as slope has.
Will people look at slope and say, “look at those crazed people death-spinning in the air begging to die”? Probably. Should that perspective be coming from a man whose job it is to educate those people? Most certainly not.