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Admittedly, it’s a little tough to get excited about riding park these days, or watching it, given how frenetically the tricks are being performed. To get that many rotations, the upper echelon of competitive snowboarding almost has to be on the edge of destruction. But then something happens you absolutely need to stop and watch. That’s what happened when I tripped upon Taiga Hasegawa, and his utter mastery of the 1980 degree spin (yeah, that’s five and a half rotations). This 17-year-old Japanese phenom can do that from nearly any position be it backside, front side, cab or switch backside. Geeeze….
Commenters on the above post were equally impressed.
Taiga got a “Wtf,” from gold medalist Zoi Sodowski, a “Dude whattt,” from Eli Bouchard, and a “Welp. Tigah you g,” from our man Gimbalgod. And my favorite one: “Isn’t that insane and yet this video will still probably not go viral.” People might not be able to comprehend this footage. But we can appreciate it.
Taiga, who hails from Aichi, Japan, won the big air event at the 2023 world championships in Bakuriani, Georgia. He recently went deuces on gold at the junior worlds in New Zealand, taking out both slopestyle and big air. He’s not just up and coming. He’s arrived.
In case you wanted to leave a negative comment, Taiga has style, too, of course. For those of you not into spinning like an egg beater, which I get, he shows off his flow in this quick follow-cam vid below.
