American Sage Kotsenburg won the first gold medal of the Olympics on Saturday

American Sage Kotsenburg won the first gold medal of the Olympics on Saturday

More proof that snowboarders are nuts:

"He wanted to throw a trick called "Back 16 Japan" on his first run in the Olympic finals, never mind that he hadn't tried the move in practice or prior competition. No one talked him out of it."

Or maybe not so nuts. I suppose he figured he had no chance to medal without some impossible, high-risk maneuver, so he gambled and won. Let's suppose he might have finished fourth with a routine performance of technical virtuosity. So he risked that, but finishing 4th is no better than finishing last. Nobody remembers either of them. But there's a massive difference between the obscurity of fourth and having your name written next to "gold" in the Olympic records until the end of time, just beneath the guy who won the snowboarding in the ancient Greek Olympics.

(Yes, we know his name. It was Papadopoulos. We know this because all Greeks are named Papadopoulos. Athens has two phone books: "Papadopoulos" and "foreigners.")

Anyway, now that I think about it, there's nothing crazy at all about the snowboarder's move. My bad.