Well, the snowboarding here at Mount Snow, Vt. is pretty impressive. Everyone is taking it to another level already. I can tell you, out of the runs I have taken here, there are definitely some flat landings. The ice makes things flat. All the landings were flat last year as well. I haven't hit a lot of the big jumps but it seems like people are doing more of the harder tricks and bigger spins. A lot more rails too. We are in for an exciting finish to the Winter X Games.

Speaking of exciting, I've been blown away by the level of riding so far. Kevin Jones' 420 to rail was amazing. Everyone is doing cab 900s and frontside 900s on the bottom hit. Last year not that many people did that at all. You learned last year if you didn't do the rail you weren't going to get the judges into you. So everyone is going crazy on the rails. That is the progression of snowboarding right now. There are always new rail tricks coming along.

Line is logged on and dialed in to Winter X -- from his laptop.

Before the contests, I had my money on all the guys who ended up winning in Slopestyle. ESPN asked me before I got here who I thought would do best and Todd Richards and Kevin Jones were tops on my list. Those guys really have the consistency and what it takes to win a contest like that.

A lot of people are talking about the format of the competitions here. The best run out of three I think is pretty much like jam format. You can only have so many runs in a certain amount of time. They had three runs today and it was pretty long. To have three runs, that is all the time ESPN can allow. The best single run is ideal. With Big Air more luck is involved. For that, there should probably be four runs and take the best two or something. There is just too much luck involved in Big Air.

Having watched these guys this week, I'm anxious to get healthy again. I just started snowboarding again for the season. All these tricks Kevin is doing, I have to really learn my rails better. I will be focusing on that a lot. I have a couple tricks in mind I'm thinking about. We'll see. It is hard sometimes to find the right jump to try these tricks on. I want to make my tricks smoother. I try and change things up year after year. Nothing is cooler than anything else right now. There are no particular tricks you have to know right now, you just have to be able to stick your big spins and now you have to be able to do rails.

Remember, originality is one of the main things in this sport. You have to be a step apart from everyone else. It is easy to copy a trick but to actually invent it and have your own style on older tricks is hard.

Keep tuning into the Winter X Games all weekend for my daily updates.

Peace.

Peter Line

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