The lightness of being: Anna Gasser spirals into the air while slopestyle.
Image: Witters
In snowboarding, the rules of the snowboarders also apply at these Winter Games – not those of the Chinese. In the snow park, the athletes are chatting, cheering and boarding as if the pandemic was already taking a break.
DThree boys and a woman get on the bus, glasses, Burton snowboard jackets, boards under their arms. A few minutes ago they were sliding down the slope. Now they’re sitting on the bus and scrolling through their Instagram profile. “Look, he’s dressed up as a tiger for the Chinese New Year,” says one at the front. “That’s really only cool with him,” says the woman. It is the Austrian snowboarder Anna Gasser.
The tiger rides down the mountain in the snow park. The bus crawls up towards the slopestyle course, a hilly obstacle course made of ice. The four actually wanted to board there, but were kicked out by Chinese helpers. The boarders aren’t used to that, when they have such a perfect park, they want to use it. “The bus is so slow, if we walked we would be so much faster,” Gasser says to the others. The boarders know the rules, but they don’t care much about them these days. They do their thing – even in China with its strict Corona rules: ride together, have fun together.
