During the wintertime, when the mountains become covered in snow, many people choose to visit ski parks. Spending time on the slopes and then retreating back to a warm lodge and sipping on hot chocolate is the perfect way to enjoy a winter day. However, how people choose to enjoy it brings on the hot debate of whether skiing or snowboarding is the better sport. Typically, a person either skis or snowboards, and it is rare to see someone do both. This is due to the stark differences between the two sports … and the rivalry between them only seems to grow.
So, is one really better than the other?
Skiing has been around for thousands of years; the first skis were made out of wood and used to make transportation a little easier and faster. However, this first draft on skiing was not like the sport that we see today. Downhill skiing was invented only a couple hundred years ago during the 1700s. By the 1800s, skiing was a popular recreational sport with athletes skiing on courses in the same way many people do today. Since then, skiing has only grown more common, being added to the Olympic games in 1964 and totaling around 18 million skiers in the United States today.
On the other hand, snowboarding was not invented until a little over one hundred years ago. The first boards resembled sleds with a base made from two skis and a string for steering. It was around the early fall of 1972 when the first modern snowboard company was created. The new sport picked up quickly, but despite its growing popularity, many people felt snowboarding was extremely dangerous and reckless, with many ski resorts even choosing to ban it. Still, snowboarding lovers persisted, and it was eventually added to the Olympic games in 1988. The sport now features more than eight million snowboarders in the United States alone.
“I learned to ski when I was little, before I learned to snowboard,” said senior Fiona Maroun. “I started snowboarding when I was 12, and I love it. I definitely like snowboarding more than skiing.”
Although this debate over which sport is better is unlikely to reach a consensus here, the debate over which is more dangerous is a much more feasible argument. Each sport demands very different techniques and involves very different muscle groups, leading to a sharp contrast in the injuries seen in athletes. For skiers, leg injuries, especially ACL tears, are common due to the way they fall. For snowboarders, they get injured more often, though the injuries are more minor; most of them being concentrated in the upper body, including a lot of wrist breaks. Both types of injuries are severe, though ACL tears demand a much longer recovery time than broken wrists do.
It truly can not be concluded which sport is better. It simply comes down to which sport you enjoy more and want to spend time doing on the slopes. Mastering one does not stop you from attempting the other.
