Top 5 Quotes from Oprah’s article on the Women’s Snowboard ‘Dream Team’
Photo: Damien Meyer/Getty Images
I love my mom and my mom LOVES Oprah. Which is why I now have a monthly subscription to O magazine. For the most part, reading up on what’s hip in the lives of 35-55 year old women is a guilty pleasure of mine. But this month I was in for a real treat.
With the Olympics just around the corner, O magazine contributor, Kate Meyers , puts that special Oprah touch on her article showcasing the US Women’s Snowboard team. To sum it up:
“There are three of them, and only one Olympic gold. What happens when your fiercest competitors are also among your best friends? Kate Meyers reports on the special kinship that bonds the top female snowboarding team on the planet.”
Oh yeah. Reading about snowboarding from non-snowboard related media is like listening to pop music. You know it’s bad but you sing along anyways. Here are my favorite quotes from the article:
- …snowboarders “Gretchen Bleiler and Hannah Teter decided to head up the mountain and bust some powder…”
- These three women fly through the air as a career choice. Their vehicle: a five-foot board. Their trajectory: After ascending on side of a U-shaped structure with gravity-defying curved walls at 30 mph, they zoom up and off its lip, ten feet into the wild blue yonder…
- …the freewheeling spirit of boarding…
- Most boarders got into the sport not because they were pushed by parents or thought it would someday make them rich, but because it was fun.
- The riders are judged on… “big air” (the amount of hang time off the pipe)…
This article made me feel warm and fuzzy because it combined lay men’s descriptive terms of snowboarding with a female bonding twist. Thank-you O Magazine for bringing me what Transworld Snowboarding never could….
I’m glad you liked the article. I think these women are incredible and I felt honored to write about them. I’m sorry I sound so OLD in print (in actual fact, I AM old, compared to you). And next time, I’ll need to get in touch with you so I sound less like a bad pop song.
Kate
“Mean-spirited” and “couldn’t find the humor in it at all” are just a couple phrases my mom used when discussing this post with me. Yes, the I’m-disappointed-in-you Mom voice is still just as effective at age 26 as it was when I was a teen.
After contemplating Mom’s perspective, I’ve realized this post may come off a little harsh. Ultimately, articles like Kate Meyer’s help spread women’s snowboarding to the masses. And that’s what Lady In Shred is all about – helping girls get stoked on snowboarding.
Note: As supportive as she is, my Mom doesn’t 100% endorse this post. Any hard feelings should be directed at me so as not to ruin any future relationships she may have with Oprah.
Third-party heehee attack!
But seriously, folks: I’m 26, have been snowboarding for nine years and I still don’t understand snowboarding lingo (and actually, I still kinda suck at snowboarding). I think it’s all about who you hang out with. I can only imagine what it would be like for an O writer to be totally authentic while writing about snowboarding AND trying to cater to her audience. Impossible? Perhaps.