Confused by snowboarding commentary at the Winter Olympics in Milan? Here's a plain-English guide to snowboarding trick names, so you actually know what you're watching.

The men’s snowboard big air final takes the spotlight Saturday, with riders launching off massive jumps as medals are decided in the trick-based event.

Olympics broadcaster Todd Richards called the men's snowboard big air final "so boring" on a hot mic on Feb. 7, and later explained why he thought so in an Instagram video.

Team USA men's snowboarder Red Gerard is a slopestyle specialist who is not a fan of having to compete in the big air format.

In the early 1970s, Dimitrije Milovich and Wayne Stoveken began building boards meant specifically to surf the snow, testing ideas in Utah’s deep powder. This became Winterstick, one of the earliest companies to treat the snowboard as serious winter sport gear with a purpose-built design.

The XXV Winter Olympics are taking place in Milan, and snowboarding will begin its events this weekend. In this archive Fresh Air interview from 1998, Jake Burton Carpenter — the founder of Burton Snowboards and one of the inventors of the modern snowboard — spoke to Terry Gross about the sport’s Olympic debut in Nagano that year,

Kimura launches himself into the air, spinning counter-clockwise. “It was truly impressive. Flawless execution, grabbed the whole way around and landed like he was doing a straight air, essentially,” said Rick Bower,

A rash of injuries in the leadup to the Winter Olympics have brought into sharp focus the risk that snowboarders and freeskiers take by flipping and twisting above rock-hard slabs of snow for a living.