The only individual gold medal won by an Olympic athlete from Russia came in a ceremony that was different from others at the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics: Figure skater Alina Zagitova didn’t hear her country’s anthem or see its flag, as other medalists did.

Because of doping sanctions against Russia, the Olympic flag flew, and the (rather generic) Olympic anthem was played at the ceremony Friday night. The same procedure occurred on Sunday, when hockey players from Russia beat Germany for gold.

Zagitova gamely jumped upon the top spot on the podium, having realized her dream and beaten the world’s best. But later, she could be seen biting at the inside corner of her mouth, as the Olympic anthem played. Her teammate, silver medalist Evgenia Medvedeva, stood alongside her.

“I could see their faces,” said Natalia Kim, a Russian fan who attended the ceremony.

“They tried so hard for that kind of moment. And of course, they wanted to see our flag, and listen our hymn [anthem]. I felt like that too, I cried there, so… But it’s OK. We are looking for the future.”

When asked about the restrictions on Russian athletes in the broader sense, Kim said, “It’s our pain now.”

“I think there is some strange things [that] happened in these Olympic Games,” she added. “I think that guilty persons should be punished, but people who are not evidently guilty – it’s not fair. They are working hard all their life.”

Among Russian fans, Kim has a rather unique perspective: She’s been living in South Korea for years, and she had long been hoping that the Winter Olympics would come to the country. She even admits to being upset when the 2014 Games went to Sochi rather than to Pyeongchang.

When Pyeongchang finally succeeded in its third bid to host the Olympics, Kim had been excited to see Russians come to Korea and compete for gold. But the doping scandal that hit the country’s sports program after the Sochi Games lingered — and in December, the International Olympic Committee suspended the Russian Olympic Committee. Many Russian athletes weren’t allowed to come to South Korea, including stars from its biathlon team – one of Kim’s favorite Olympic sports.

“I was waiting, really looking forward to these games,” Kim said, “and suddenly, I was greatly disappointed.”

With Zagitova and Medvedeva as the strong favorites to win the gold medal, Kim attended their three main figure skating events — in the team competition, the short program and the free program.

“During all these competitions we were sitting with Americans and with Canadians and today I was sitting near Japanese,” she said. “And people are really friendly… and they want to enjoy sport, they want to enjoy events” and celebrate, she said.

Tthese Winter Olympics have divided her emotions in a variety of ways, Kim said. She adores Evgenia Medvedeva, and is amazed by her talent. But she understands that Zagitova is a young and rising star.

She wept as she watched the medal ceremony, Kim said: “I was proud greatly. It was from one side, tears of pride and happiness. From another side, I regretted greatly we can’t see our flag.”

As the Olympic anthem played through loudspeakers in the Medals Plaza, Kim and her husband, Donald, and other Russian fans around them, sang Russia’s national anthem.

“We supported as we could,” she said.

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The Olympic Athletes from Russia won 4-3 in a game against Germany where neither team had much to lose.

Germany had defeated hockey powerhouses Sweden and Canada in the semifinals, and the Olympic Athletes from Russia were highly stacked. Neither country had medaled in men’s hockey since 2002, when Russia won bronze.

With 0.5 seconds remaining in the first period, Russian Vyacheslav Voynov scored the first point of the match after an ambitious shot that made it past German goaltender Danny aus den Birken.

Germany brought the score to a tie with 10 minutes left in the second period, after a shot by Felix Schütz bounced off of goalkeeper Vasily Koshechkin and deflected off the body of Russian defenseman Bogdan Kiselevich across the goal line.

A steady back and forth continued, until Russian Nikita Gusev scored a point with 6:39 left in the third period. But the Russians relaxed — and just 10 seconds later, German frontman Dominik Kahun tied the game right back up, the stakes just as high as before.

With three minutes left in the third period, Jonas Müller broke the tie 3-2 with the cleanest shot of the game after a winning a puck battle against the Russians. This lead didn’t last for long; either: With less than 60 seconds to go, Gusev scored again, and the teams were back to a tie.

About 15 minutes into sudden-death overtime, Gusev scored yet another goal — and the Russians threw off their helmets in celebration of winning gold.

The match was guaranteed to be Germany’s best showing in men’s hockey no matter the outcome: The team had won bronze in 1932, and West Germany won bronze in 1976. Their silver medal is the strongest performance Germany has ever shown in men’s hockey, while Russia won gold in 1992 as the Unified Team.

Canada walked away with the bronze medal by beating the Czech Republic 6-4 after being knocked out for silver and gold by Germany.

The Russian athletes competed in neutral Olympic gear rather than Russian colors. The International Olympic Committee suspended the Russian Olympic Committee in 2017, citing a widespread culture of doping in Russia and alleged state-sponsored system of cheating.

Russian athletes were allowed to compete in the 2018 Winter Games under a neutral Olympic flag and were required to pass rigorous doping tests. Going into Pyeongchang, the IOC said there was a chance Russia’s athletes could march under their country’s colors at the games’ closing ceremony.

After two Russian athletes were disqualified over doping, the IOC voted to uphold the ban, meaning that athletes will once again leave their Russian colors at home in the closing ceremony.

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Canada had its best Olympic Games ever medal-wise in Pyeongchang, despite missing out on gold in men’s and women’s hockey and men’s and women’s curling — sports that country usually dominates.

The country has 29 medals, including 11 gold. Norway is leading the overall medal count with 38 medals, Germany is in second with 31 and the U.S. is in fourth with 23.

For the first time in this millennium, Canada didn’t take gold in women’s hockey. In the final game against the U.S. last week, standard regulation time had ended with a 2-2 tie. Neither team scored a sudden-death goal during a 20-minute overtime — and the resulting penalty shootout also ended in a 2-2 tie. That sent the teams to a high-stakes, sudden-death shootout, where the U.S. came out on top, breaking Canada’s 2002-2014 streak of four consecutive gold medals.

The women’s hockey record wasn’t the only Canadian gold streak broken in Pyeongchang. The men’s curling team won gold in 2006, 2010, and 2014 — but took bronze this year after the U.S. rose above them 5-3 in a late surge during a semifinals match. The country did earn one gold in curling: Kaitlyn Lawes and John Morris secured the medal in mixed doubles curling.

Canada won gold in the first men’s hockey event in Antwerp in 1920, and kept the gold streak up for the following three winter games. They would medal in every single winter games until 1964, and earned gold in 2010 in Vancouver and 2014 in Sochi. Men’s hockey was Canada’s third gold streak broken in Pyeongchang: The country settled for bronze after being knocked out of the finals by Germany.

And finally, Canada lost its streak of medaling in women’s curling, too. The country won gold in the first-ever women’s curling event in Nagano in 1998, and medaled in every winter games since then — until they came in sixth place in Pyeongchang after a series of tough losses. Sweden won gold, while the “Garlic Girls” of South Korea took silver and Japan took bronze.

Despite losing out on its traditional sources of gold, the country won its second-highest total of Winter Games gold medals in Pyeongchang, after winning 14 in its home-turf Vancouver games in 2010.

Canada secured 11 Pyeongchang gold medals in total this year: Four in freestyle skiing, two in figure skating, one in mixed doubles curling, one in men’s two-man bobsleigh, one in men’s long track speed skating, one in men’s short track speed skating and one in men’s snowboarding. The country has 8 silver and 10 bronze as well.

Among gold medal winners are fan favorite figure skaters Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir, the designated flag bearers for the 225 athletes who competed as part of Team Canada. Short track speed skater Kim Boutin will bear the flag in the closing ceremony, after earning two bronze medals and one silver.

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In Greek mythology, the Olympians were said to drink ambrosia, which bestowed upon them immortality. Occasionally, athletic heroes like Heracles were also gifted a sip. But the myths don’t say much about the golden-amber liquid getting them all drunk.

Today’s Olympians have been swept up in a new trend largely emerging from Bavaria: nonalcoholic athletic recovery beers. Over the past few years, a number of breweries, such as Erdinger and Krombacher, have expanded their offerings of sober sports beers. This year, beers from both brands are a common sight in the Olympic Village.

But how much science is there to support the use of beer as an athletic recovery drink?

Beer’s most oft-cited health benefits revolve around plant-derived compounds called phenols. These organic compounds often have defining tastes. The spice of peppers? That is the phenol Capsaicin. The pungent heft of oregano or the smoke in scotch? Carvacrol in the leaves and guaiacol from charred barrels.

Appalachian State University’s David Nieman has studied phenols’ health effects. On the whole, phenol-rich diets tend to lower inflammation and reduce the risk of sickness, he says. “[Polyphenols] have a very unique molecular structure that can actually regulate the genes that control inflammation,” in addition to general antiviral properties, says Nieman.

In 2011, Nieman and the University of Munich’s Johannes Scherr investigated the effects of beer, which contains around 50 phenols, on athletes — whose intense physical activity can compromise their immune activity. When marathon runners were instructed to drink 1.5 liters of nonalcoholic beer a day, their risk of upper respiratory infection was reduced. The activity of white blood cells, a good indicator of inflammation, was lowered 20 percent.

However, phenols aren’t the only health benefits beer has to offer — and not just any brew can be called a sports beer. For example, regular alcoholic beer is a diuretic, and having to urinate more dehydrates athletes, says biologist Mauricio Sepulveda of Chile’s Pontifical Catholic University. It also can disrupt crucial protein synthesis, says Ben Desbrow with Griffith University in South East Queensland, Australia.

What is more, beer is a uniquely social drink, notes Desbrow — a dietitian who has long studied the health effects of the brew and even engineered a version less likely to give tipplers a hangover. “In Australia, and I’m sure it’s the same in many places around the world, we’ve got a lot of people who, after exercise or exertion or maybe a hard day’s work, they like to drink beer,” he says.

That comes with a hydration dilemma. If athletes drink beer, they won’t get properly hydrated. That is because water, when drunk in large quantities, is quickly expelled without electrolytes. According to Desbrow, our bodies can easily hold water and properly rehydrate when we take in calories as we drink — but athletes can’t eat before every new match, round, bout or run. One of the benefits of sugary recovery drinks is that they restore athletes’ stores of glycogen — a sugar-based compound our bodies use to readily store energy. If an athlete needs something to drink between rounds of boxing, or innings of a baseball game, they’re going to want the sugar in most sports drinks.

But when the day is wrapping up, athletes don’t need to worry about replacing glycogen stores in a hurry. So a nonalcoholic beer and some water can help them recover — while also offering an opportunity to socialize with other athletes.

In 2013, Desbrow found that having athletes drink a reduced-alcohol beer with added electrolytes allowed them to retain more fluids. His original study had only seven participants. But since then, he and other researchers (including Sepulveda) have done severalfollow-up studies that have generally confirmed that light or nonalcoholic beer works well enough for hydration.

Desbrow’s specially formulated, electrolyte-rich beer wasn’t significantly more hydrating than regular light beer. Yet, several breweries are touting the added electrolytes in their sports beers. The added marketing appeal might make it worthwhile, but modifying the salt content of beer — without majorly disrupting the flavor — can involve some complicated and costly experimentation.

And removing alcohol from beer is already pretty complex. One of the most popular methods is to take advantage of the fact that alcohol’s boiling temp is lower than water’s by nearly 4 degrees Celsius. By applying heat and creating a vacuum (which further reduces the boiling temperature), brewers cook off the alcohol — but not without also altering the flavor profile of other compounds.

Other brewers use reverse osmosis to remove alcohol: They filter out most everything but the water and alcohol, leaving a syrupy concentrate. After distilling out the alcohol, they remix the concentrate and remaining water. Either way, the beer has to be recarbonated, either through adding yeast to the bottle or injecting carbon dioxide (which technically makes it a soda).

Other new methods of brewing nonalcoholic beer are popping up. Bravus has a sober IPA — long thought impossible because hop flavors are quickly disrupted by alcohol-boiling heat — by using what it will only call “biological wizardry.” There is also a growingarray of wild yeasts and genetically modified brewers yeasts, which can produce low-alcohol beers.

Ultimately, sports drinks are pretty darn good for replenishing electrolytes and spent sugar stores. But at the end of the day (literally), low-alcohol beers can provide a recovery beverage with two benefits relatively unmatched by other options: first, a host of extra healthy plant-derived compounds. Second, as Desbrow points out, people drink beer together over all the world (and have for much of the history of human civilization), so what could honor that spirit more than shared brews in a multinational village of Olympians?

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Nadezhda Sergeeva of Russia has tested positive for a banned substance and has been disqualified from the Winter Olympic Games in Pyeongchang, the Court of Arbitration for Sport said Saturday.

Sergeeva was ranked 12th in the women’s bobsleigh, but is now disqualified from the event and “the results obtained” by her team “at the same event are disqualified with all resulting consequences,” the organization said in a statement.

The court said the 30-year-old tested positive for trimetazidine, a heart drug used to treat angina, and said she admitted to the violation. The drug affects metabolism, according to The Associated Press. The World Anti-Doping Agency banned it in 2014.

Sergeeva “accepted a provisional suspension beyond the period of the Games,” the court wrote, “and reserved her ‘rights to seek the elimination or reduction of the ineligibility period’ following the conclusion of the Games.”

Sergeeva is the second Russian athlete to fail a doping test at the Pyeongchang Olympics. As NPR’s Bill Chappell wrote on Friday: “The news about Sergeeva comes one day after a bronze medal was stripped from Russian curling athlete Aleksandr Krushelnitckii, who had tested positive for meldonium in Pyeongchang.”

The Russian Bobsled Federation announced on Friday that Sergeeva had failed the drug test.

Hockey player Ziga Jeglic of Slovenia and speedskater Kei Saito of Japan also tested positive for banned substances, the AP reports, and the two have left the games.

Athletes from Russia are competing under the Olympic — not Russian — flag, after authorities banned Russia’s federation from competing once they concluded that Russian athletes had engaged in systemic state-backed doping in the 2014 games in Sochi.

The International Olympic Committee is still debating whether to allow Russian athletes, now wearing uniforms labeled OAR (Olympic Athlete from Russia), to march under the Russian flag during the closing ceremonies on Sunday.

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With a gold medal in the snowboard parallel giant slalom, Ester Ledecka of the Czech Republic has become the first woman in Winter Olympics history to win a gold medal in two different sports at the same Olympic Games.

On Saturday she emerged victorious in the final run against Germany’s Selina Joerg, finishing just 0.46 seconds ahead. Joerg took silver in the event, followed by Ramona Theresia Hofmeister, also of Germany, who took bronze.

A week earlier, Ledecka surprised spectators and herself by taking a gold medal — in skiing. Ledecka finished first in the women’s super-G in Alpine skiing, finishing several spots ahead of the decorated American skier Lindsey Vonn.

But Ledecka is best known and has seen the most success as a snowboarder, where she’s won world titles and competed in the Winter Games in Sochi four years ago.

Ledecka is the third athlete to win gold in two events in the same Winter Games, according to analytics company Gracenote. The last time it happened was in 1928, with Johan Grøttumsbråten taking gold in the Nordic combined and cross-country skiing. Four years earlier, Thorleif Haug achieved the same thing, the company says.

The 22-year-old Ledecka earlier made Olympic history just by being the first woman to compete in both the Alpine skiing and snowboarding events.

She first skied at age 2 and snowboarded at age 5, according to The New York Times, but refused to follow the conventional wisdom of her coaches to give up one sport in order to specialize.

In the men’s snowboarding parallel giant slalom, Nevin Galmarini of Switzerland was the gold medal winner, besting his silver medal he won in Sochi in 2014.

Lee Sang-ho of South Korea finished 0.43 seconds behind to take silver, the country’s first medal in a snowboarding event. Zan Kosir of Slovenia was the bronze winner, beating Sylvain Dufour of France in the “small final,” which determines the contest’s overall third place.

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Updated at 4:05 a.m. ET

The U.S. men’s curling team made history on Saturday at the Pyeongchang Winter Olympics, playing in — and winning — the first gold medal curling game ever to feature an American team. Led by John Shuster, the U.S. broke out late to upset Sweden, which had lost only two games in South Korea coming into the final.

For the U.S., the gold medal win is all the more shocking because for a long stretch during the Olympic tournament, Shuster’s team was constantly on the verge of elimination. But they fought their way back, dismissing curling powerhouse Canada to set up a date with Sweden.

The U.S. win came after pressure and intensity had steadily built in what was for a long while a back-and-forth game, with each team’s curlers placing their shots well.

The Americans used a blockbuster eighth end to seize a 10-5 advantage that proved to be insurmountable. The two sides played perfunctorily from there, with the U.S. keeping the house clean of enough stones to be a threat. Sweden added two points in a quick ninth end to trail, 10-7.

As the U.S. played defense and focused on preserving its lead, Sweden’s skipper Niklas Edin took his last stone, whirled it around for a moment and gently flung it down the sheet of ice toward the other end, conceding defeat with grace.

The game was remade when both teams had two stones left in the eighth end. The U.S. team had grouped its stones in the house, along with a lone Swedish piece.

The Swedes called timeout to confer — and afterward, Edin delivered a stone that pushed a lone U.S. piece slightly aside — causing murmurs to break out among the Swedish fans. Out on the sheet, Edin hung his head.

Shuster followed that with a perfectly delivered strike into the house that took out not one but both Swedish stones, giving the U.S. a total of five points in the end and setting off a celebration among the American fans, who throatily chanted “U-S-A! U-S-A!”

Highlights

Sweden led after two ends — but then the U.S. tied it, 2-2, and took a 3-2 lead in the fourth end on a result that was so close it had to be measured by a special compass-like device. The Swedes responded with a 2-point end for a 4-3 lead midway through.

In the fifth end, the Americans were able to leverage a stone between two Swedish stones, securing a close spot — and when the Swedes were unable to clear it, Shuster delivered a second scoring stone, taking the lead, 5-4.

Another big moment came in the seventh, after Swedish skipper Niklas Edin tried to take out two U.S. stones in the house that were bracketing a Swedish piece. Edin’s shot whizzed past, barely nudging his own stone and drawing a wide-eyed look from Sweden’s leader. The Americans set up a block, but Edin managed to salvage a point to tie it.

Play-by-play game recap

After a scoreless first end, things got more interesting in the second, with the teams leaving stones short of the house. That led to a more complex end — and when the U.S. missed a chance to clear Sweden’s stones on a deflection, the Swedes capitalized by taking two points.

Before that, the crowd had been oohing and aahing at each delivery, as the teams knocked their foe’s stones out and left theirs close to the button.

The game tightened in the third end, with Sweden building a position in the house — until Tyler George delivered a stone that knocked their two stones out. With the hammer stone, Shuster knocked two Swedish stones out of the house and left two of the Americans’ stones in the target — tying the score, 2-2.

In the fourth end, the U.S. struggled to get a scoring chance, with Sweden using a wall of interlaced stones to shelter a stone in the house. But after the Americans managed to situate two stones around the button, the Swedes couldn’t clear both — and a ruling was called for.

As the crowd waiting to learn who would get a point, an official measured the distance from Sweden’s red stone to the center, then slowly spun his measuring stick around — and pointed at the yellow U.S. stone.

A possible pivotal moment came late in the fifth end, when Shuster delivered a stone that slid through the house, seemingly destined to kiss a Swedish stone and replace it in the house. But it skimmed harmlessly past. That assured the Swedes of one point, and Niklas Edin put a perfectly delivered stone through the area that stopped close — scoring two points.

The game drew notable fans from both countries. Shortly after play began, Ivanka Trump entered the curling center to watch. She sat in a center seat, four rows up from the railing. Across the aisle to her left sat Sweden’s King Carl XVI Gustaf.

When these two teams played early in the tournament, Sweden opened with four points in its first end and never looked back, beating the U.S. team 10-4. That game was called after eight ends, after Sweden put it out of reach. But that was a week ago; since then, the U.S. team has gained momentum and confidence as it knocked off strong opponents.

Sweden and the U.S. took very different paths to get here. The Americans fought their way back into the playoffs after starting 2-4; the Swedes had lost only two games in Pyeongchang.

The Americans reached the final by edging Canada in a close-fought 5-3 game that saw Canada edge forward – only to have the Americans, led by skipper John Shuster, claw them back. And late in the game, the U.S. team snagged two points that put them into the final.

The U.S. team is made up of Shuster, Tyler George, Matt Hamilton, John Landsteiner, with Joe Polo as the alternate.

The Swedish team is led by Niklas Edin, along with Oskar Eridsson, Rasmus Wranaa, Christoffer Sundgren, and the alternate Henrik Leek.

The Pyeongchang Games have been a terrific run for the Swedish national curling team — both the men’s and women’s squads got into the gold-medal finals this weekend. The Swedish men won bronze in the 2014 Sochi Olympics; they’ve never won gold.

The women’s final, between Sweden and South Korea, will be played on Sunday morning in South Korea – at 9 a.m., or 7 p.m. ET Saturday night in the U.S.

This year’s tournament in Pyeongchang comes on the 20th anniversary of curling’s return as an official Olympic event, in 1998. It was part of the original slate of sports when the Winter Olympics began in 1924, but it was eliminated after only three nations entered. Sweden was one of them, winning silver.

A quick guide to curling

Games comprise 10 ends, with both teams delivering eight stones in each end. It’s a huge advantage to deliver “the hammer” — the last stone of an end.

Curling is played on a sheet of ice that’s 150 feet long and nearly 16.5 feet wide. Each stone is a 42-pound (or up to 44-pound) chunk of granite selected from Ailsa Craig, an island in Scotland.

The target area on the sheet is the house. The bullseye is called the button — and it’s bisected by the center line and the tee line. The object is to finish an end with your stones closest to the button than the other team’s. Each stone that’s closer than the opponents’ brings one point.

Teams are called “rinks” — for the U.S., the John Shuster rink is in the final, for instance.

The games often last 2-3 hours. Each team has four players and an alternate (who usually sits with the coach just off the playing area).

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Olympic sports have their own special vernacular — colorful slang terms that are head-scratchers to an outsider.

Here in Pyeongchang, I’ve made it my mission to crack the code. So I cornered as many Olympic athletes as I could and asked them to divulge their terms of the trade.

When I asked U.S. biathlete Tim Burke for his best example, he didn’t hesitate.

“If you have a bad crash, a lot of times we call that a ‘yard sale,'” he told me.

Yard sale! I was intrigued.

He explained it this way: “You’re on a downhill, you fall, your skis and poles are all headed in different directions.”

And how would you use it in a sentence?

“‘I had a serious yard sale on that big downhill over there,'” he offered. “That’s never a good time. Except for your teammates and the camera crew.”

In truth, a lot of the lingo I’ve picked up has to do with disaster — spicy ways to describe when things go horribly wrong, as they often do in ultra-high speed, high-amplitude sports on ice and snow.

Take aerials, where skiers fly 60 feet in the air, flipping and spinning their way back to earth.

If you’re unlucky, you could end up crash-landing in what’s known as a “reverse suitcase.”

I asked U.S. aerials head coach Todd Ossian for a definition.

“The reverse suitcase is twisting past the flip and having too much rotation, so you land on your chest,” he explained. “So your head goes one way and your feet come the other.”

Like a suitcase flapping open too far.

And how about the “fly swat”?

“It’s kinda like catchin’ an edge,” Ossian said, “and the force makes you go to the ground quick. There’s a lot of impact there when you do that — slaps you down. And you don’t want that.”

I figured short track speedskating would be a gold mine of cool lingo. It’s notorious for its chaotic collisions and spills, since skaters race in a tight pack and jockey aggressively for position, often crashing violently into the pads as they try to pass.

Short track skater J.R. Celski came through.

“If the pass is gonna be close or tight,” he told me, “we usually say ‘bombs,’ like ‘Uh-oh, something’s gonna blow up!’ So it’s like an explosion. It most likely means people are falling.”

Maybe you’ve seen what happens in cross country skiing, when the racers collapse on the snow, totally spent, as soon as they cross the finish line. They routinely work themselves to the point of exhaustion.

And of course, there’s a word for that, too.

“If you ‘bonk,'” newly minted U.S. gold medalist Jessie Diggins told me, “it means you’ve just run out of energy, there’s nothing left in the tank, and suddenly your body can’t go on anymore ’cause you’ve run out of blood sugar. So if you hear someone say, ‘Oh, I bonked in that race,’ it means they just, like, BOOM, hit the wall. They’re done.”

And it’s not just athletes coming up with creative turns of phrase. Turns out the guys who make the ice for various sports also have their own lingo.

Mark Messer, the ice meister at the Gangneung Oval, the venue for long track speedskating, grinned when he told me his favorite — the nickname for a patch of ice causing problems.

“We’re gonna go check on ‘bubble boy’ today,” he said, referring to a patch with too much air, creating a bubble.

And yes, the term comes from a Seinfeld episode (“probably my favorite ever,” Messer said) — the one about the boy who has to live in a sterile, plastic bubble and gets in a fight with George Costanza.

The ice crew is filled with “real good Seinfeld fanatics,” Messer explained. “So a lot of what we do here always goes back to a Seinfeld episode of some sort.”

And then there’s snowboarders’ lingo — a foreign language unto itself. The names of their tricks and grabs is a smorgasbord of wonder: Chicken salad. Stalefish. Tamedog. Bloody Dracula.

Freestyle skiers seem to share the same devil-may-care approach as their snowboard brethren (and sisteren). Freestyle skier Aaron Blunck boils his sport’s attitude down to four letters: “stee.”

“Stee is short for ‘steez,’ like steezy run, like style. It’s short for style,” he said. “We just say ‘stee.'”

As in: “‘Damn, that was a stee run, he showed style, he showed creativity, he flowed,'” Blunck translated. “That’s what it means. Pretty much whatever word you can think of, shortened into the shortest way possible, is what we like to say.”

And when things go wrong? Any colorful words for a bad crash?

“Typically, it’s just a swear word,” Blunck said with a laugh. “It’s just the f-bomb, straight up. All the time.”

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