Kitty cats and cloud hands – how U.S. Olympic snowboarders keep calm in competition

The pros agree: It’s scary at the top of an Olympic snowboarding run.

“I was scared yesterday, I’m scared every day,” says Sean FitzSimons, a U.S. snowboarder from Hood River, Oregon, who competes in Big Air and Slopestyle.

The Big Air ramp is 55 meters tall, about the height of a 15 story building.
Snowboarders launch off the ramp, performing flips and spins.

“You always have a little bit of fear of injury, but when you’re doing the bigger tricks, especially the first few times you do them, especially on a new jump, it’s always like – all right, let’s do it,” FitzSimons says, adding an expletive.

Competition playlists

By the time they get to the Olympics, elite U.S. snowboarders have spent years getting stronger, jumping higher, flipping faster and honing all of their competitive skills, which includes calming their nerves. Many have developed their own distinct pre-drop rituals, with specific songs and physical practices that block out the noise and help them lock in.

For FitzSimons, his pump-up playlist starts with old school Metallica. “‘For Whom the Bell Tolls,’ is usually my go-to,” he says, “Then Metallica radio on Spotify, and then it goes to some Alice in Chains…That whole genre just gets me psyched.”

On the women’s team, snowboarder Maddie Mastro, from Wrightwood, California, gets pep talks from her coaches before dropping into the halfpipe, though she’s not always listening closely to what they say. “I feel like I black out from the moment I walk up ’til the run’s over,” she says, “But I’m sure it’s just these words of motivation that help me.”
Mastro also sings pop songs to psych herself up. “Normally it’s Doja Cat, or lately it’s been Natasha Bedingfield — bringing her back,” she says.

17-year-old Alessandro Barbieri, an up-and-coming halfpipe star from Portland, Oregon, starts each run with three claps and a little ollie before dropping into the pipe. He also includes his real cat in his ritual – a silver tabby Maine coon named Bella. His mom sends him photos of the cat before competitions. “It keeps me more calm,” Barbieri says.

His teammate Chase Josey from Hailey, Idaho says Barbieri’s cat habit has earned him the nickname “Kitty Kitty Meow Meow.”

The U.S. men’s halfpipe snowboarders have also been tapping into an ancient Chinese energy practice. “I’ve been doing a bunch of qigong before riding this whole season,” says Chase Blackwell, from Longmont, Colorado. “Qigong is a form of meditation in motion. It gets me in the zone, calms the nerves a little bit and gets me fired up to go send,” he says.

Josey says the whole team has been practicing qigong. “You’re collecting the energy, harnessing that universal power,” he says, “Then you can go out there and push your own body to extreme limits in the halfpipe, and ideally do it gracefully and smoothly and land on your feet.”

They’ve even got their coaches doing “cloud hands,” Josey says. “It keeps it light, too. In those moments of high pressure, you can block out the noise a little bit, just breathe,” he says.