A Whack Start For A Goofy Sport

In honor of the single worst debut by a sport in Olympic history, please memorize the following snowboarding terms and have them tattooed somewhere extremely rad.

Animal. 1) Muppet character who was official mascot of the U.S. snowboarding team. 2) Direct relative of many members of the U.S. snowboarding team.

Goofy. 1) Riding a snowboard with your right foot forward. 2) Canadian giant slalom snowboard racer Ross Rebagliati, who a) won snowboarding's first gold medal; b) lost it after testing positive for marijuana; c) claimed he had only inhaled the secondhand smoke of his snowboarding friends; d) got the medal back on appeal; and then e) said, "I'm not changing my friends.... I might have to wear a gas mask from now on, but, whatever." Well, as long as he's sorry.

Half-pipe. 1) The two-walled snow structure in which snowboarders ride. 2) Essential measurement at Canadian snowboarders' parties.

Half-assed. What the Olympic competition was, considering a) the best snowboarder in the world, Norway's Terje Haakonsen, skipped the Games and went surfing at Laguna Beach, Calif.; and b) it was run by skiing officials, not snowboarding officials, which is like having Augusta National Golf Club run a Martin Luther King Day parade.

Drop-in. 1) The start of a half-pipe ride. 2) What Japanese police did to Rebagliati at his hotel room, looking for marijuana. They then interrogated him for more than six hours before letting him go. "Just a procedural thing," Rebagliati said afterward.

Five to seven years. Procedural thing for conviction of possession of marijuana in Japan.

Suck. 1) Not riding your snowboard well, as in this quote from American half-pipe bronze medalist Shannon Dunn: "The Japanese are cool. You can suck, and they'll still yell for you." 2) The commentary of CBS snowboarding expert Jim (the Ripper) Rippey, who misused the adjective good 1,287 times in two broadcasts and had this analysis during American Chris Klug's giant slalom run: "Yeah, Chris! C'mon, buddy!"

Whack. Very bad, as in the way the American snowboarders felt about their closetful of U.S. Olympic team garments: polyester slacks, Junior League pumps and conservative blazers that they wouldn't wear to a fire. "It's whack," said one, "but it's free!"

Rivalry. A word apparently not in the vocabulary of 19-year-old American half-pipe bronze medalist Ross Powers, who was asked who his chief opponents were. "Uh, I really don't have a riralry, rivralry—I mean a ribal...aw, f—-." To which teammate Todd Richards, sitting next to him, said, "Well put."