The Risk vs Reward Ratio

Snowboarding is a comparatively young sport, debuting at the 1998 Games in Nagano, Japan, that has some of the most daring stunts, among them the Crippler 540 and double cork. James Moeller, the chief doctor for the U.S. Olympic team says, "they're pushing the edge of what they can do. The bigger the trick, the bigger the air, the more risky it appears, the more points they'll score."

Statistics from the Consumer Product Safety Commission make clear just how dangerous winter sports can be and not just for Olympians: 139,332 Americans were injured while skiing in 2007 and even more, 164,002, got hurt while snowboarding that year. And when looking at all winter-sport injuries, including sledding, snowmobiling and ice skating, 10 percent involved a head injury.

Yahoo!Sports has a great article on the risk factor associated with the snowboarding events that we will watch in the Vancouvor Olympic Games.

Two years ago competition officials made the decision to raise the walls on the halfpipe from 18 to 22 feet gave riders a blank canvas. The way the world’s most famous snowboarder looked at it, the sport could go one or two ways.

One option—admittedly the safer one—was to pack more dizzying spins into a run.

Where some saw danger, Shaun White and his high-flying buddies saw possibility.

Higher walls meant bigger jumps and more air time. Why spin when you could flip and spin?

“With the other direction you’re sacrificing a certain style other snowboarders have in being creative,” said the defending Olympic gold medalist, who will go for a second gold Wednesday night on Cypress Mountain. “It’s cool to see that that’s the direction that we’re going, the creative route and kind of expressing your own strengths of snowboarding.”

Even if that creativity carries considerable risk.

“You get an injury and somebody that goes down and crashes and it just really shocks people,” White said. “I think I can speak for everyone in saying that’s just a part of what we do. We fall, get back up and we try it again. It’s the best part of our sport. You can take a crash and come back and succeed over it and it’s just the best feeling you can have.”

For a video example, here is Shaun White practicing what he calls the "Double McTwist 12"