LIVIGNO, Italy (AP) — A backside double cork 1080! Followed by a cab triple cork 1440! Holy Crail, that was a sweet grab!
The snowboarders and freestyle skiers will be speaking a language all their own as they “shred some gnar” (ride some gnarly conditions) at the Milan Cortina Winter Olympics.
Can't tell a melon from a method grab? No worries. Here's a cheat sheet of some terms you might hear when the action starts in Livigno, Italy.
Halfpipe: Imagine a massive tunnel that you could drive a truck through, slice the top off, then transform it into hard-packed snow. That is the halfpipe where snowboarders and freeskiers take turns zooming across its inclined slope to gather speed before launching into a series of acrobatic jumps. The halfpipe at the Livigno ski resort hosting these Olympic events measures 220 meters (240 yards) in length, 22 meters (24 yards) in width, and rises to 7.2 meters (23.6 feet) in height.
Slopestyle: A course located on a slope where snowboarders and freestyle skiers take turns trying to put together the most polished and demanding series of tricks coming off rails and molded bumps for aerial lift. The Livigno slopestyle course allows for jumps that can exceed 25 meters (27 yards).
Big air: The third of the “park” events consists of athletes performing one single “big” jump. The Livigno big air jump ramp peaks at over 40 meters (yards).
180, 360, 540, 1440: The degrees of a spinning trick completed in a single jump. 360 is 1 complete spin, 720 two spins, etc. The most spins completed in competition are 6 1/2. That's a 2340, both on snowboard and skis, and the massive spins like that almost always come in big air. On the halfpipe, anyone who pulls off a 1440 will be in contention for a medal. Important for street credibility: 2340 and the like are pronounced “twenty-three forty,” not "two thousand, three-hundred and forty."
Backside: Facing backwards going into a rail on a slopestyle course, as well as when a rider or skier faces uphill when completing a spin on a jump. Frontside means a rider faces downhill when completing a spin.
Cork: A head-over-heels flip that produces a corkscrew effect. A double cork is two flips, a triple cork, three, etc. Triple corks are the trick that could win the men's halfpipe.
Grabs: How the snowboarder reaches down and holds the board during a jump. There are many, but among those that come up for the top riders: Mute (front hand grabs the toe edge), melon (front hand grabs the back edge), stalefish (grab heel edge with rear hand). method (a melon but with a little flair, tweaking the board up and twisting) and, of course, the crail (both hands and back leg should be straight; do not try this at home). Judges look to see whether the rider actually grabs the board, not just places their hand on top of it, and some of these grabs need to be executed between bindings.
Grabs, Part 2: Freeskiing has its own glossary of these grabs, including Japan (behind and across to grab opposite ski) and seat belt (imagine putting a seatbelt on, but by bringing the buckle up to grab the latch).
Goofy: When a snowboarder leads with his “bad foot.” For a right-handed person, it would mean leading with the right foot.
Kicker: Another term for a slopestyle jump.
Lip: The top edge of the halfpipe.
Switch: Riding backwards, also called a “fakie.”
Tomahawk: A steak Shaun White ate at the X Games in Aspen that doubles as his preferred name for what's more commonly known as the Double McTwist 1260, a trick with 3 1/2 spins (two of them head over heels) that starts with a backside spin and is still considered one of the toughest out there.
Cab: A basic of most halfpipe rides, it's named after a skateboarder, Steve Caballero. It starts with a switch approach into a frontside spin.
Yolo: “You Only Live Once.” This is a Cab, double cork 1440 that was the focal point of the 2014 Olympics. White saw Swiss rider Iouri “iPod” Podladtchikov land it in the lead-up, then went about trying to perfect it himself; it was the iPod who pulled it off at the Olympics to win gold. The Yolo is still a relevant trick but in a sign of how much things have changed, it's now a triple cork (or two) — not on the board eight years ago — that will likely win this year's Olympics.
AP Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics
FILE - Austria's Anna Gasser competes during the women's slopestyle finals at the 2022 Winter Olympics, Feb. 6, 2022, in Zhangjiakou, China. (AP Photo/Lee Jin-man, File)
FILE - United States' Shaun White trains before the men's halfpipe finals at the 2022 Winter Olympics, Feb. 11, 2022, in Zhangjiakou, China. (AP Photo/Gregory Bull, File)
NEW YORK (AP) — This is not the run up to the midterm elections that Republicans wanted.
A year and a half after winning the White House by promising to lower costs and end wars, Donald Trump is a wartime president overseeing surging energy costs and an escalating overseas conflict that many in his own party do not like.
He offered little clarity to a nation eager for answers this week during a prime-time address from the White House, his first since the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran more than a month ago, simultaneously suggesting that the war was ending and expanding.
“Thanks to the progress we’ve made, I can say tonight that we are on track to complete all of America’s military objectives shortly, very shortly,” Trump said. “We’re going to hit them extremely hard over the next two to three weeks.”
Trump's comments come roughly six months before voters across the nation begin to cast ballots in elections that will decide control of Congress and key governorships for Trump’s final two years in office. For now, Republicans, who control all branches of government in Washington, are bracing for a painful political backlash.
“You’re looking at an ugly November,” warned veteran Republican pollster Neil Newhouse. “At a point in time when we need every break possible to hold the House and Senate, our edge is being chipped away.”
It’s hard to overstate how dramatically the political landscape has shifted.
At this time last year, many Republican leaders believed there was a path to preserve their narrow House majority and easily hold the Senate. Now they privately concede that the House is all but lost and Democrats have a realistic shot at taking the Senate.
Republicans are also struggling to coalesce around a clear midterm message on Iran.
The Republican National Committee has largely avoided the war in talking points issued to surrogates over the last month. The leaders of the party's campaign committees responsible for the House and Senate declined interview requests. Many vulnerable Republican candidates sidestep the issue, unwilling to defend or challenge Trump publicly.
The president remains deeply popular with Republican voters, and he has vocal supporters like Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina.
“That was the best speech I could’ve hoped for,” he wrote on social media after Trump's address on Wednesday evening. Graham said Trump “gave the American people a clear and coherent pathway forward.”
Trump made little effort to sell the conflict to Americans before the initial attack. Five weeks later, at least 13 U.S. service members have been killed and hundreds more injured. Thousands more troops have converged on the region, and the Pentagon requested $200 billion in new funding.
The Strait of Hormuz, a key passage for a fifth of the world’s oil, remains closed. The average price for a gallon of gasoline in the U.S. was $4.08 on Thursday, according to AAA, almost a full dollar higher than on President Joe Biden's last day in office.
On Wednesday, Trump insisted that gas prices would fall quickly once the war concluded but offered no solution for reopening the Strait of Hormuz. Instead, he invited skeptical U.S. allies to do it themselves.
He insisted that the war would be worth it.
“This is a true investment in your grandchildren and your grandchildren’s future,” Trump said. “When it’s all over, the United States will be safer, stronger, more prosperous and greater than it has ever been before.”
Former Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican who was once among Trump's most vocal allies in Congress, lashed out against his Iran policy.
“I wanted so much for President Trump to put America First. That’s what I believed he would do. All I heard from his speech tonight was WAR WAR WAR,” she wrote on social media. “Nothing to lower the cost of living for Americans.”
About 6 in 10 U.S. adults say the U.S. military action in Iran has “gone too far,” according to AP-NORC polling from March. Roughly a third approve of how he’s handling Iran overall.
The possibility of sending U.S. forces into Iran also appears politically unpalatable.
About 6 in 10 adults are “strongly” or “somewhat” opposed to deploying U.S. troops on the ground to fight Iran. That includes about half of Republicans. Only about 1 in 10 favor deploying troops.
At the same time, Trump’s approval ratings have remained consistently weak. About 4 in 10 Americans approve of how he’s handling the presidency, roughly in line with how it’s been throughout his second term.
Republican strategist Ari Fleischer, a senior aide in former President George W. Bush’s administration, acknowledged that Trump has not received the polling bump in this war that Bush got after invading Iraq.
Bush, of course, worked to build public backing for the Iraq War before going in. Immediately after the 2003 invasion, Bush's popularity soared, as did the stock market.
Public sentiment and the economy soured only after the conflict stretched on. It ultimately spanned more than eight years, spawning a generation of anti-war Republicans — and sowing the seeds of Trump's “America First” foreign policy.
“My hope is that the Trump experience is the exact opposite of the Bush experience,” Fleischer said.
He said Trump must win the war decisively and quickly to avoid a further backlash, saying there could be a “very significant political upside if things end well, oil comes down and markets rally.”
Fleischer added that Trump's actions will matter much more than his words.
“Ultimately, he is not going to get judged on his persuasion or his explanations or his assertions, he’s going to get judged on results,” he said.
Associated Press writer Linley Sanders in Washington contributed to this report.
In this image made with a long exposure, President Donald Trump speaks about the Iran war from the Cross Hall of the White House on Wednesday, April 1, 2026, in Washington. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon, Pool)
