For skiers and snowboarders at the Beijing Olympics, getting into the right headspace before dropping in is half the battle. That is where music and good vibes come in.
It is pretty common at the starting line of any snowboarding or freestyle skiing event to see riders bobbing their heads and swaying as they prepare to jump in.
US skier Alex Hall, who yesterday won gold in the men’s slopestyle final, said that he prefers not to wear headphones during contests, but listens to music between his runs with his teammates.
Photo: Reuters
“Colby [Stevenson] was jamming on the speaker up at the top, just some good old vibe songs ... all the boys chilling together having a good time listening to some tunes,” Hall said, mentioning a fellow US freestyle skier.
Canadian Max Moffatt, who had a disappointing ninth-place finish in the slopestyle event, said that he uses music to calm his nerves before competitions.
“Sometimes I listen to classical music to kind of chill me out,” he said, adding that he was not even sure which song he had been listening to earlier in the day.
“I honestly don’t know who it was, I just have a playlist that says ‘piano’ and I just shuffle,” the 23-year-old said.
Chinese teen phenomenon Su Yiming, who won a Big Air snowboarding gold this week to make him the country’s youngest Winter Games champion, has quickly become known for more than his sporting achievements.
Online fans searched for songs that Su used as background music to his snowboarding videos on social media, compiling them all into Su-themed playlists that have since gone viral on Sina Weibo.
One of the playlists has been downloaded more than 32,000 times in just the past few days.
The playlists show that Su, 17, is partial to Justin Bieber and Drake, with plenty of Post Malone thrown in.
“It just exactly matched my tastes,” one Sina Weibo user said in Mandarin, after listening to some of Su’s favorites.
“All those snowboarders have swag,” the user said.
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