More than medals

Snowboarding’s risk takers will prize thrill-seeking over podium places

- Cath Bishop

Melissa Peperkamp, of the Netherlands, jumps during snowboard training before the Milano Cortina Olympics

(PATRICK SMITH/GETTY IMAGES)

As the Winter Olympics approaches, we get to watch sports many of us have never tried. How can we connect to these sports? What should we look out for? What can we enjoy and learn? Research by the three-time Olympian Lesley McKenna (available at https://risk-aesthetic.com/) into what makes snowboarding meaningful offers us some great ideas.

As a British athlete, coach and team manager, McKenna experienced first hand the pressures of managing athlete performance, wellbeing and the pursuit of medals. She saw the push and pull between the inherent creativity in pipe and park snowsport events and the drive for standardisation to make it easier to compare athletes. She felt the tension between the long-term joy of pursuing these sports and the external push for short-term results. Troubled by the direction of travel and keen to understand how to create better high-performance environments, McKenna set out to answer the critical question: how could athletes and coaches find a way to perform well without losing what makes their activity worth doing?