One more spin. One more flip. Add a twist, a grab, some extra flair. Now try the same trick, but backward. Maybe that’s enough to reach the podium.
For a certain segment of the most extreme Olympic sports, there is no limit to the imagination. Snowboarders and freestyle skiers generally can fly as high as they want. They can try any trick that they think they can perform.
In many other events — like ski jumping, cross-country skiing or bobsledding — success comes with redundancy and finding efficiency in repetitive motion. What they do at this year’s Winter Olympics will look a lot like what athletes did long ago.
Not in the halfpipe, the slopestyle courses, the aerial ramps. Not where winning means doing tricks that no one else can do. Or wants to do.
That is what halfpipe snowboarder André Höflich, a 24-year-old from Germany, is dealing with now, trying to dial in the hardest trick of his life in time for the Olympics. Höflich spent the winter working on a routine of halfpipe tricks that would impress the judges in Beijing.
How to do that is a difficult, personal calculation. He must push his limits, past his comfort zone, riding the thin edge between danger and evolution.
André Höflich, Snowboard halfpipe, Germany If someone will ask me about my first love, I would
André Höflich, Snowboard halfpipe, Germany tell them it was definitely snowboarding.
I’m not scared of injuries or surgeries
because I’m used to those things.
But if I could not snowboard anymore, that
would break my heart.
This is the only thing I want to do, and I want to do it
as long as possible.
But I also have to push myself all the time to be able to
do this longer.
At the same time, pushing myself to the limits,
it’s getting more dangerous for me.
The possibility to lose everything
comes closer and closer and closer the more I push my limits.
Right now, I’m working on the cab double cork 1260.
I’m basically going backwards,
then I’d rotate three and a half times, two flips
until I finally land backwards again.
John Branch, New York Times reporter How many other people have landed this trick?
Like three other people who can actually do it.
And then there would be me.
The best athletes, like Höflich, spend their training time trying to piece together new and inventive sequences.
It is called “progression.” The tricks get higher, bigger, twistier — more dangerous. Performances that won medals at past Olympics might not even qualify this time. Time weeds out those who do not evolve.
Höflich is no stranger to fear. It accompanies him every day to the halfpipe. What he goes through, physically and psychologically, is something that every other top snowboarder and freestyle skier feels.
Brock Crouch
Snowboard (slopestyle, big air), United States
Shaun White
Snowboard halfpipe, United States
Eileen Gu
Freeski (slopestyle, big air, halfpipe), China
Jamie Anderson
Snowboard (slopestyle, big air), United States
Brolin Mawejje
Snowboard slopestyle, big air, Uganda
Mark McMorris
Snowboard (slopestyle, big air), Canada
Anna Gasser
Snowboard (slopestyle, big air), Austria
Red Gerard
Snowboard (slopestyle, big air), United States
Shaun White is 35 now, heading to his fifth Olympics. He is doing tricks more difficult and dangerous than he performed when he won gold medals in 2006, 2010 and 2018. It is a cruel trick of reverse-aging — getting better while getting older.
Consequences of progression can be severe, even deadly. The 22-foot-deep halfpipe is especially dangerous, with its rock-hard walls and unforgiving horizontal deck. The Canadian Sarah Burke died after a training crash in the halfpipe in 2012. Most top snowboarders and freeskiers have been seriously hurt.
They know the risk. But they push on.
Höflich has voices in his head. One belongs to his coach, like a psychologist, reading Höflich’s mind and mannerisms. Others belong to friendly competitors, encouraging him with positive vibes.
But the biggest voice in his head is his own. Each day, each run, Höflich wonders if now is the right time to make the next big move.
There is little margin for error. “If it doesn’t scare me,” he said, “I’m not on the limit.”
It’s always the same when I’m learning a new trick.
There is always this voice in my head like: “Am I ready?
Can I do this?”
My mind is always trying to trick me.
“Well, what if you land on your head?
What if this happens? What if this happens?”
The negative me told me, “You can’t do it,” and the
positive me told me, “You can do it.”
So you’ve got to learn how to deal with it.
I could potentially always, like, fall hard on this trick.
I just got to make sure I don’t land on my head.
I have to keep working on it until I land it perfectly
every time.
Proving the negative me wrong, I say:
“Yes, I can do it. Don’t talk like this to me.”
It’s still something new, and I’m still working on it.
I’m still learning it.
I’ve been landing on my feet on the bag all the time,
like, 20 times before.
Why should I mess this up on snow?
Part of the training is to commit the trick to muscle memory. Höflich practices on the relative safety of a trampoline. Then he brings it to a slope-side airbag, assured of a soft landing.
He has tried it a few times in the halfpipe, where serious injury is one mistimed rotation or misguided landing away. He can land on his feet every time when trying it on the airbag. But the concrete-hard ice of the halfpipe is not so forgiving. The thought of landing on his head haunts him.
Again, then again, and again. He keeps trying.
Time is running short. The Olympics are coming.
As soon as I’m dropping into my zone,
I can’t hear, I can’t see, I can’t feel.
There is no fear anymore.
It’s like a robot doing his thing,
and I’m just watching myself from the outside.
I crashed like four or five times.
Went back up. Tried it again.
Crashed. Went back up. Tried it again.
Crash. Crash. Crash.
Ow!
From try to try, the fear just disappears.
Never fully, but a little bit.
On every crash I had, I touched the wall with my feet
first. And that gave me the security I needed.
I’ve been there before, and I didn’t die, so
why not do it again?
And again and again and again?
So today didn’t really work out.
I fell a couple of times, I didn’t get it clean.
I was pretty sure I got it right, so I could just, you
know, walk up, do the trick and go back down.
Just easy business.
And that was when I was actually expecting, but it turned
out to be a hard-core battle for me.
We’ll never be able to do our tricks every single time
perfectly.
I’m not a machine, and I need breaks,
and I can’t just push through like all the time,
all year, every day.
It’s OK to not do it sometimes.
Get rested and come back up tomorrow.
Through weeks of training, Höflich came close to landing the trick. He got the combination of spins and flips and landed on his feet — enough to tell him that it was possible. But he could not complete it cleanly, without touching a hand to the snow or wobbling off-balance.
Ultimately, he hoped, the maneuver would be part of a five-trick routine down the halfpipe. It all must flow smoothly. The trick needed to be close to perfect, nearly every time.
“If I land a trick nine times out of 10 tries, then I can say, yes, this is definitely contest ready, and I can put it into my run,” he said. “If it’s just six out of 10, I can’t. I can’t tell myself that this is my trick. Because it’s not. I’m still learning it.”
As the winter’s competition season began, Höflich performed his routine without his new trick. He was still good enough to earn third place, landing on the podium, at a major event in January.
But he had to get better if he wanted to earn a medal in Beijing. The level of competition was rising around him. The Olympics were coming fast.
Höflich went back to work on the trick.
Read more on what Olympians fear
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