Ashley Caldwell, part of the gold-winning team in the new mixed aerial event in freestyle skiing, is used to making history. She's the only woman to land "the daddy."
What is the daddy? The quadruple, twisting backflip is just one of the terms getting tossed around in the snowboarding and freestyle skiing events at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. Another is the triple cork — a move so difficult it once landed snowboarding legend Shaun White in the hospital.
White's Beijing Olympic runs will probably not include a triple cork — a trick that Ayumu Hirano of Japan landed twice in competition this season. The double McTwist 1260 is White’s signature trick after he landed it in his victory lap after winning the halfpipe gold medal at the 2010 Winter Olympics. More recently, he landed the double cork 1440 twice back-to-back during his 2018 gold medal run.
How is a triple cork different from a McTwist? And what’s chicken salad and roast beef? Here’s a breakdown of snowboarding and freestyle skiing terms.
Related: Shaun White answers snowboarding questions
- 1080: Three full rotations in the air. Chloe Kim was the youngest gold medalist to land back-to-back 1080s in the women’s halfpipe at the Olympics, helping Kim clinch her gold medal in 2018.
- Chicken salad: In this move, the rear hand reaches between the legs and grabs the heel edge between the bindings while the front leg is boned — or straight out. The wrist rotates inward to complete the grab.
- Cork: An off-axis rotation. If a riders inverts twice, the trick becomes a double cork. A third invert makes it a triple cork.
- The Daddy: A quadruple, twisting triple backflip, Ashley Caldwell's signature move.
- Goofy stance: In a regular stance, a snowboarder places their left foot in front and the right foot in the back. A goofy stance is the opposite — the snowboarder rides with their right foot forward. Also called goofy-footed.
- Grab: This describes the way a rider grabs their snowboard during a trick. There are many different types of grabs, including mute, indy, nose, tail and Japan. Judges may reward riders for performing a variety of grabs. A double grab is performing two different grabs in one aerial maneuver.
- McTwist: Named for skateboarder Mike McGill, the McTwist is an inverted aerial where the snowboarder rotates 540 degrees or more and does a front flip. Two flips make it a double McTwist.
- Michalchuk: Named for Canadian snowboarder Mike Michalchuk, this is a backflip done in halfpipe on the backside wall. Two flips are a double Michalchuk.
- Pretzel: In this slopestyle rail trick, a skier spins onto the rail in one direction, then stops their momentum and spins off the rail in the opposite direction.
- Roast beef: The rear hand reaches between the legs and grabs the heel edge between the bindings while the rear leg is boned, or straight.
- Triple cork: A triple cork is three flips with a varying number of diagonal rotations. If there’s a number after the trick, it relates to the degree of the trick. A frontside triple cork 1440, for example, is four full rotations and three off-axis flips.
YOLO flip: A cab (frontside rotation while riding switch — or in the opposite of their natural stance) double cork 1440 done in the halfpipe. The term comes from Swiss snowboarder Iouri Podladtchikov.
