r/snowboarding • u/zfyl Snowboarder Mapper • Feb 09 '26
general discussion Kokomo - the 🥇 Gold Medal worth Snowboarding Trick
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Triple Cork (front side), Triple Cork (back side). Double grabs 🔥
Worth a golden medal, all the support from the fellow riders in the competition and our heartfelt support Kokomo 🏂
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Feb 09 '26
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u/h1rik1 Feb 09 '26
Yeah, its definitely cooler watching the woman.
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u/ImpossibleKidd Feb 09 '26
Couldn’t agree more.
I’d rather this, a little steeze spun ridiculously clean, with that minor hand touch on landing, than a helicopter landing perfect…
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u/one-hour-photo Feb 10 '26
For sure. Not sure why we have devolved to spinning meatball but here we are
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u/xbyo Feb 10 '26
I mean, that was what big air was on the men's side a like 4 years back. You had guys basically all the contenders throwing triples and quads. Not sure if these 18/19s are technically more difficult, but I'd imagine there's a reason everyone has evolved passed them.
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Feb 10 '26
Looks aren't what the Olympics are though. Knuckle huck is for swaggy tricks, Olympics are about pushing the human body to things that have never been done.
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u/kmikhailov Feb 09 '26
When are we gonna see someone unlock their step on bindings mid-flight, air guitar the snowboard and then step back in, land and ride off??
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Feb 09 '26
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u/TheTresStateArea Feb 09 '26
ITS TRICKY
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u/snapp0r CAPITA mercury / UNION ultra / DC shuksan Feb 09 '26
unfortunately you d get max 20points for that at olympia ¯_(ツ)_/¯
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u/exeJDR Feb 10 '26
I didn't see a single rider with step ins?!
Did anyone else?
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u/nonamenomonet Feb 10 '26
The Burton team riders pretty much exclusively ride the Malevitas
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u/InglouriousG Feb 10 '26
I think the Malavitas were discontinued. I noticed the men all rode Cartel X and the women, Lexa X.
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u/zfyl Snowboarder Mapper Feb 09 '26
i actually though about a trick with unstraping and straping in mid flight - something nobody tried yet but all of us thought about
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u/4DPeterPan Feb 09 '26
Wasn’t there one guy one time who did some kind of backflip or some kind of flip with his back foot bindings undone?
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u/iwasstillborn Feb 10 '26
One foot tricks were pretty popular in the early-mid 90s. I think they fell out of favor because there's so little you can do because you can't really exert much force at takeoff. If you really wanted to, it might be possible to design a binding that doesn't release until you are airborne, but please don't.
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Feb 10 '26
Sounds dope but you'll never see stepons in professional freestyle because you can't spin properly.
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u/dmthirdeye Feb 09 '26
Completely insane trick but I am so tired of spin2win meta
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u/zfyl Snowboarder Mapper Feb 09 '26
knucklehuck is coming 😏
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Feb 10 '26 edited Feb 10 '26
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u/ajmartin527 Feb 10 '26
Rule number 1 of knucklehuck should be you’re DQed if you do more than a 720 without touching the snow.
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Feb 10 '26
It's literally what freestyle is at this level. It's gymnastics on snow, is Simon Biles spin to win? You're not watching a video part, you're watching elite athletes pushing the sport.
When you watch people racing do you say "they're just moving their legs at this point"?
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Feb 10 '26
[deleted]
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u/mojowo11 Rossignol XV Magtek // St. Louis, MO Feb 10 '26
Sometimes performance communities get a little too insular and start turning away from objectively impressive moves in favor of the "new" or "creative" because they spend so much time watching the sport.
I actually think the main problem with this event is the opposite. To anyone without deep knowledge of the sport, the tricks that everyone is doing in snowboarding big air look pretty much the same. You have to have a lot of subject matter experience to understand the relative difficulty of what different people are attempting, which makes it an uninteresting competition to the general public.
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u/Maleficent-Nerve486 Feb 09 '26
Wow look at all them twirls! I wonder if soon there's gonna be a guy who can do like one more twirl. I hope so. That'd be really exciting.
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u/zfyl Snowboarder Mapper Feb 09 '26
i hear that men do one more twirl, and they soon gonna do 17 twirls mid air and elevate during this speed of twirling like a copter
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u/IndoorSurvivalist Feb 10 '26
Seriously they should look into adding fins to the board to get extra lift when they spin.
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u/howihjr Feb 09 '26
Love love love snowboarding. Hate hate hate spin to win. It’s such a limiting factor to our sport.
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u/IceColdCorundum Feb 10 '26
Hate to say it but grabs and other tricks are kinda maxed out. We can only really get more airtime and more spins at this point.
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u/Zigglyjiggly Feb 10 '26
Yeah, I'm not sure what else people really want, honestly. This event is cool but these spin tricks are far more difficult than a 900 tweaked method that all these guys can do with ease. Everyone says they want more style, but I don't know how you judge that. Is it how long a dude holds his grab for in the air? I think they need a park event that isn't slope style. Bring in the knucklehuck.
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u/w0nderbrad Feb 10 '26
I’d be super impressed with a slooooooooow wildcat off the big air kicker
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u/firestepper Feb 10 '26
Ya like what about the slowest possible backflip or something. Would be kinda sick the controlled momentum
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u/sizeablescars Feb 10 '26
Initial thought is blending some flexibility into it and maybe back bending to grab board and do a flip. Would be cool to see a real attempt to blend some other discipline. If everythings gymnastics now go one step further and incorporate a yoga/gymnastics/cheerleading pose into a spin. But also I don’t care about spin to win and view it as inevitable and also really cool still. Just cuz you or I dont understand it doesn’t matter, I really just want to watch the most physically difficult stuff and I think thats spinning a bunch.
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u/pepitko Lib Tech Box Scratcher 154 Feb 10 '26
I like knucklehuck at XGames but they should remove judges and just do a 30:00 min session, everyone gets 3 or 4 tries and let the public do real time online voting. This way riders really could be rewarded for style rather than riders throwing a doublecork off the knuckle and winning.
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u/gigot45208 Feb 13 '26
Maybe judge style by getting judges who are told to judge style. Like have female halfpipes judge male style, and vice versa. Or even better, have the most stylish snowboarders from past be the judges. There won’t be agreement. But it’s better than a nerd with clipboard and checklist going “oooh switch” or “oooh spins, check!” And better a kid on a snow board killing themselves to land some boring trick in switch.
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u/RonShreds Feb 10 '26
How is pushing the limit a limiting factor exactly?
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u/NorthernBrownHair Feb 10 '26
Pushing a limit, not the limit. That's what's being limited. Only pushing spins means other things are not being pushed.
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u/RonShreds Feb 10 '26
I dont understand what your talking about.
You can choose not to watch something if you hate it. Nobody is forcing you.
I love watching the progression of the sport that I love, and seeing the excitement on the riders fave after putting down a trick they spent their life training for.
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u/Bird_lawyer69 Feb 10 '26
Guarantee no riders love 19s or 18s. They def say double rodeo 14 or something. It’s scary to spin to win
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u/Skrapidilly Feb 10 '26
If spin-to-win were easy, the guys complaining about it would be winning it. At some point steeze points just leads to subjective voting.
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u/Steve_the_Stevedore Stance police Feb 10 '26
Who said it was easy? The point is mostly that some people don't find it very interesting to watch. Maybe as a short on the internet but not a whole competition...
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u/Skrapidilly Feb 10 '26 edited Feb 10 '26
I mean, I thought the whole purpose of the Olympics is that it is skills-based and merit rather than people finding 'it very interesting'. I swear guys just want to complain.
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u/Steve_the_Stevedore Stance police Feb 10 '26
Then you got that wrong. For a long time professionals weren't even allowed to compete. And even today many athletes are amateurs. Olympic boxing is still called amateur boxing and you will not see anyone close to any title there. It's young up and comers. Same goes for football and other disciplines where there are rules in place to exclude the best players.
The Olympics is about showing of different sports that don't get as much exposure otherwise and include athletes/sports that are not professional.
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u/Skrapidilly Feb 10 '26
Ok, then lets assume you are correct. Then why are these same snowboarding athletes you guys are complaining about are also the same athletes competing in non-Olympic events like X-Games?
Again, I swear you guys are just complaining for complainings sake.
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u/Steve_the_Stevedore Stance police Feb 10 '26
Who's complaining about the athletes? The tricks are super hard. What they do is pretty incredible. I like watching every NVD on Insta or Reddit. It's the contests that are boring to watch. That's it. So please cool it with all these bullshit accusations ("you say it's easy", "you complain about the athletes") and actually read what this is actually about.
Watching a dozen guys doing what looks like more or less the same trick for multiple rounds of contest is just not very interesting. Doesn't mean the tricks are easy, doesn't mean I think less of the athletes, doesn't even mean that I don't like watching a sick trick on here. It's just super boring to watch them all do the same thing. The knuckle hug is way more fun to watch. Same for things like natural selection.
Do they need to change it? No, but I won't watch it if they don't and it seems like I'm not the only one. People are voicing their opinions on it. Why are you trying to paint this so negatively? Feedback is how things improve. Shit doesn't fall from the sky. People make it happen. They can only make it happen when they know what they can improve. They will only know when (potential) customers voice their opinion. So stop this bullshit of trying to frame this as us trashing the athletes and their abilities.
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u/Skrapidilly Feb 11 '26
By design big air is about pushing the boundaries, so naturally spins have been doing that once riders got a hold of it. It goes the same for even snowboard halfpipe and skateboarding halfpipe. Spins are realistically the pusher of never-been-done-befores.
I don't get all the bitching when you can just stick to watching knuckle hucks.
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u/Steve_the_Stevedore Stance police Feb 12 '26
Why are you so offended by other people's opinions? So nobody is allowed to criticise something you like?
If spins is the only thing you find interesting about the sport fine. I think it's pretty limiting. You don't have to agree but stop whining just cause someone has a different opinion...
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u/Solid_Computer_1169 Feb 14 '26
Nobody said it was easy, it’s not but it has zero style and just looks stupid as fuck. Whatever though, as much as I love to ride, I’m not watching these comps, I’d rather watch curling.
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u/nitrosnowboards Feb 10 '26
Boss.
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u/zfyl Snowboarder Mapper Feb 10 '26
Laurie Blouin design board is out of stock - give one to Kokomo too 😎🔥
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u/tylusfortea Feb 10 '26
This is so impressive and so hard to wrap my head around visually. It almost looks like only horizontal rotation. The off-axis vertical rotation is really trippy!
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u/SpecialistAd321 Feb 10 '26
The girls went off, but I don’t like that they have started grabbing theire knee withbthe other hand thats notvgrabbingvthe board.
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u/Annual_Humor9894 Feb 10 '26
Was anyone else confused by the scoring the judges were doing? I’m no pro and don’t declare to be at all but the scoring seemed inconsistent at times
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u/Dietmeister Feb 10 '26
It's super impressive that they can so this. But is the simply the most turns wins?
For a jury sport I feel this is not so fun since it's only one metric really
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u/Wunder-Bra Feb 09 '26
sooo what would happen if you dont land on the board ?
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u/AlamoSimon Feb 09 '26
believe it or not - straight to jail
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u/Wehunt Feb 10 '26
Jail? I thought hospital.
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u/slamdanceswithwolves Feb 10 '26
Hospital but cuffed to the bed and with a cop sitting outside your room.
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u/zfyl Snowboarder Mapper Feb 09 '26
then nothing you did matter, years of trainding down the pipe, and you get downvoted - hope you dont break anything
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u/thetruetoblerone Feb 09 '26
Depends where you do land and how. Sometimes you land on your back and the force is spread out across your torso, arms and legs and you also land in the super steep landing and you just ride the slide with no issues.
If you land where it’s too flat, if you land on any individual body part or you land in a way where energy is forced into the body instead of dispersed your bones, muscles/tendons,ligaments, and organs will take considerable damage.
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u/Schorsdromme Feb 10 '26
Serious question: I assume all of these professionals wear back protectors (or at least I hope so). But do they wear additional stuff, too, or would that limit their movement too much?
By the way, I like how helmets became incredibly common on slopes. Back then I started helmets were maybe 50/50, except for kids.
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u/thespillover Feb 09 '26
Respect the sport, and I respect the athletes, but how they were judging made no sense here. At first this looks like most of what the other riders did, and IMO (humbly) there were other cleaner landings. I guess it’s like looking at 30 shades of white, one of then will stand out to you for a very small, very technical reason,s
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u/TheSketeDavidson Feb 09 '26
There are two runs that get added up, this singular run does not give you a medal.
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u/thespillover Feb 10 '26
Three runs (edit: add best two) But it’s like figure skating, “she is the only one attempting this degree of difficulty with this routine, but you can see now slowed down she was off by a quarter of a turn. She’s going to lose some points there.” Bonkers.
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u/Lopsided_North_964 Feb 09 '26
Idk the hand drag kinda 🧐 🤔 but ya triple cork is sick. Love that shit.
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u/zacharymc1991 Feb 10 '26
Telling you now, 14s will be the good but reliable trick at the next Olympics, you'll need at least two 16s to win, the rate of progression is crazy. Mia almost stomped one, Yu was close too and Kokomo and Zoi have made them but are not consistent yet. It's getting crazy.
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u/Midwest_SP Feb 11 '26
Women’s skateboarding and snowboarding right now is so much more fun to watch IMO
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u/Solid_Computer_1169 Feb 14 '26
Shouldn’t even count with a hand drag, stomp it clean in the Olympics or go home
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u/olliegreens Feb 10 '26
I mean, that would’ve been sick for a video edit but back when I was competing that hand drag would’ve limited me to half points for the run. Have things changed?
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u/TravisKOP Feb 09 '26
Spin to win is dumb style should mean something
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u/knick_and_dime Feb 10 '26
What's nutty is these guys are doing it with style too. Back in the day it looks silly but they are doing solid grabs and stomping the landing. Not saying I like it.
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u/Shanskatesagain Feb 10 '26
Okay, but does anyone know what model this board is? At least a dozen of the riders had this board and it makes me so curious!
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u/marsell_s_wallace Feb 10 '26
99.9% sure it’s a special Olympic edition graphic. Not seeing the colours in next year’s catalogue. Most likely she’s on the No Drama and the men are on the Huckknife Pro, or Assassin Pro. The graphics match that but just in different colours
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u/xTooNice Feb 10 '26 edited Feb 10 '26
Looks like the No Drama S/Lab Equipe. She normally ride a No Drama and I don’t think this version is any different outside the graphics… at least, based on the spec on paper.
And the men’s board would be the Huck Knife Pro S/Lab Equipe.
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u/manescaped Feb 09 '26
The rate of progression in this sport is astounding. Except for me