GOLD & SILVER DUOS

We’ve now got 2 Gold & Silver Duos for the United States and their sports both have a lot of fun new vocabulary to learn!

Alex Hall & Nick Goepper

Freestyle Skiing: Men’s Slopestyle

The Pretzel: When you are spinning in the air in one direction and reverse direction at the very end. This is what Alex Hall did to win gold. Watch Here. I’m honestly not sure how this is possible, especially with skis on. I can barely go from fast to slow while running.

Nose Butter: The announcers keep throwing out this word with no explanation and I finally had to google it. Here’s a full video but it’s basically when you put pressure in the “nose” of the skis, the front, and lift the middle and back of the skis off the ground and do a 180? I think at least. Someone might need to correct me on that.

Cannon: A rail or box extending off a jump at an upward angle. So it’s like they are getting shot out of a cannon and have more airtime for extra tricks. I think parts of the Great Wall snow recreations might technically be a cannon on this course. Or I’m just making that assumption in my head because the Great Wall probably had cannons at one point. It at least did when Matt Damon fought aliens from it….

Kaillie Humphries & Elana Meyers Taylor

Bosled: Monobob

Monobob: Starting with the most obvious word needing a definition. The Monobob is a bobsled for a single person. The driver has to push, steer and brake all themselves. I’m very confused why female athletes only get to compete in Monobob and Two-Person while male athletes do two-person and four-person. It’s like a weird form of sexism where they don’t think women should be going too fast in a four-person sled but also totally fine with making them do it all by themselves in the monobob. Let’s just let everyone do it with as many or as few people as they want.

Chicane: A sequence of tight serpentine curves. We all know who could have survived Game of Thrones if he only knew how to serpentine a bit….

Kreisel: German for circle; a curve that forms a circle by having the track cross itself. There are apparently only 7 active courses in the world that have one of these so it’s pretty exciting we get to see it in action. Maybe this is where they should make the Luge relay folks actually high-five each other.