The competitions for snow-sport professionals are winding down; and the European Winter X-Games held in Tinges, France has marked the ending to the season.

A monumental season, to say the least.

The weather couldn’t have been more uncooperative for the skiers and snowboarders of the 2011 Euro X-Games. Riders had to take advantage of every clear run they could get, and somehow manage their best through the blinding, winter elements.

The weather was impairing enough Thursday that the men’s slope-style snowboarders decided collectively to not have an elimination round, but to have a mass finals session Friday with all 23 riders. That’s one of the beauties of this sport: the participants genuinely respect each other’s talents enough to strive for a level playing field; something not seen in many other professional arenas.

Maybe that is why the technical edge of the game is progressing so quickly. A few years ago, no one had thought of doing double corks with a 1,260-degree rotation. Now, it is one of the most popular tricks among the best because of its difficulty.

A double cork, arguably one of the hardest tricks in snowboarding, refers to a rider inverting him or herself sideways two times during the same aerial rotation. Two other terms that are most common to the snowboarding lingo are ‘frontside’ and ‘backside’, which are pretty self explanatory.

Frontside, meaning the rider’s front side is literally facing the jump, and backside would be just the opposite.

The numerous, quirky names given to all of the tricks are confusing at best to those who don’t live and breathe action sports. Most of the time audiences just wait to listen to the commentator’s verbal interpretation. There’s nothing wrong with that.

But the X-Games junkies and newcomers alike will be waiting in anticipation for the Shaun Whites, Torstein Horgmos, and Sebastien Toutants of the world to add another gravity defying trick to the list. It’s almost hard to believe that anything just shy of flying 500 yards down a SlopeStyle run using a snowboard as a propeller can be done.

However, just as Shaun White managed to soar an amazing 23 feet in the air in the X-Games SuperPipe competition, where he is a triple crown gold medalist, there must be some young, creative, and ballsy rider out there ready to press the envelope.

The pressure is on in the off-season to deliver a wicked enough run to have Sal Masekela yelling his wit-filled commentary until he’s blue in the face.