Snowboarders have had a long love affair with flips. Totsuka's triples are the latest progression

LIVIGNO, Italy (AP) — Long before snowboards edged their way into the Olympic world, riding them was more of a pasttime than a sport. More than searching for gold medals, riders dug out halfpipes in parks and on mountains and tried to do something cool.

Often the “judging,” as it were, wasn't about getting one or two specific jumps perfect, but rather, who could come up with something tougher, better, trickier.

That is the core of the word that defines snowboarding: Progression. It's a word so central to everything that happens on a halfpipe that it is actually built into the judging standards. The definition: "The introduction of new tricks or linking tricks together in a novel way.”

On Friday night, halfpipe riding took another giant leap on the progression scale. Champion Yuto Totsuka's winning run included back-to-back triple corks with 1440 degrees of spin — it means he twisted while going head over heels three times.

It was a trick Shaun White, Ayumu Hirano and others tried for years to simply land once. When Hirano did it to win the Olympics four years ago, it was seen as a remarkable breakthrough. Now, it's the price of simply getting on the podium.

Here's a look at the tricks that have won the Olympic men's halfpipe contests since the sport came to the Games in 1998.

1998: Gian Simmen

The halfpipe was around 11 feet (3.35 meters) high, which is half of what it is today. The contest was held in a pouring rainstorm in Japan, which didn't help things. Also, unlike today, that contest featured two runs that counted, which cut against the idea of going for the most massive trick possible.

Still, two jumps after the stocking cap flew off his unhelmeted head, Switzerland's Simmen threw a cab 900 — flipping upside down and twisting 1 1/2 times after approaching the wall backward — for the win.

2002: Ross Powers

It was actually silver medalist Danny Kass who delivered a 1080 in the American sweep of the podium.

But Powers flew so high and landed so perfectly that afternoon in Park City, Utah, that he won the gold on a day in which Snowboarder Magazine — one of the few publications that understood the sport — called the scoring “completely strange.”

2006: Shaun White

The start of a snowboarding dynasty began in Italy, when White pulled a stars-and-stripes bandana over his chin and pulled off back-to-back 1080s. There was also a backside 900 at a time when most people weren't taking off for jumps while facing up the hill.

Then 19, he won the first of three gold medals and called it “definitely one of the best things that's ever happened to my career.”

2010: Shaun White

With the victory sewn up at Cypress Mountain near Vancouver, White decided to put on a show anyway. On the final hit of his victory lap, he pulled off his signature invention: the Double McTwist 1260, which involves riding backward into the wall, then doing two flips and 1260 total degrees of spin.

White preferred to call it the “Tomahawk,” named after a massive steak he ordered in Aspen before the Winter X Games once.

2014: Iouri Podladtchikov

This was the year of the YOLO — “You Only Live Once” — and it was Podladtchikov who first pulled off this trick involving 1440 degrees of spin during a training session. White saw it and abandoned his work on a triple cork to try to do it better.

By the time they reached the Sochi Olympics, White had it down. But on the big night, the rider called the ‘iPod" used the YOLO to spoil White’s shot at a three-peat.

2018: Shaun White

The tricks weren't more difficult than they would become eight years later, but in some ways, this goes down as the most epic of all halfpipe contests.

It was mainly because White dropped in last and had to land a run he'd never landed in a contest before to win. This was four months after a brutal training accident that resulted in him being airlifted off the mountain. White pulled it off and beat Ayumu Hirano. The signature tricks: back-to-back double-cork 1440s.

2022: Ayumu Hirano

A handful of riders could land triple corks. Doing it, then finishing a run, was a different story.

Hirano pulled it off at Secret Garden in China to finally break White's hold on the Olympics. The Japanese star edged out Scotty James, who had a more technical run but didn't have the triple cork.

2026: Yuto Totsuka

In a sign of how far things have come, 10 of the 12 riders in Friday night's final tried triple corks and eight of them landed them.

Totsuka did two — back to back — and once again left James holding silver after he also delivered a triple but couldn't stay upright on the massively challenging 1620-degree trip that closed out his final run.

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AP Winter Olympics: https://apnews.com/hub/milan-cortina-2026-winter-olympics