Winter Olympics Snowboard Cross

Snowboard Cross - now we are talking exciting exhilarating sport, pure racing like athletics, first past the post but with all the thrills and spills of downhill skiing. I have just watched the quarter final through to final races for women's snowboard cross, and was amazed at how exciting this sport is. It is like BMX on snow, the six boarders start form a gate and head down the course of jumps, kicks, knuckles and drop offs and the winner is the first past the post.

None of this judging on style and technique, you have just got to get to the end in one piece. As our competior Zoe Gillings found out what you must do is finish. In her semi final race she just missed out qualifying for the final by a board tip finishing fourth, she was third until the last jump where the Italian overtook her. The amazing part was she had a slow start, and was lying a distant fifth, but with a few mistakes by other boarders, a missed edge, a poor line etc, she moved up to third and had a great chance of making the final. This unpredictability of the outcome makes this the most exciting racing I have seen so far in the Olympics. 

The only negative of this racing is poor TV direction. Unfortunately the Russian TV production was not up to it. Poor camera positions and direction that followed the leaders missing all the action further up the hill. Only three finish where are the other three you ask, yes they fell but were missed by the TV crew, we got good slow mo's of the winners last jump though.