Figure skaters often spend an entire offseason laying out the precise elements for their routines, before perfecting those routines and making small tweaks in the leadup to the Winter Olympics.

Freeskiers and snowboarders, on the other hand, might show up to a contest and wing it.

It’s sometimes seen in slopestyle and big air events. One of the most well-known examples, in fact, came when slopestyle first debuted at the Winter Olympics.

Ahead of the 2014 Sochi Games, several snowboarders spent years dialing in the vaunted triple cork, a trick considered necessary at the time for anyone with aspirations of an Olympic gold medal.

But the day of the men’s snowboard slopestyle final, Sage Kotsenburg — an American rider who had seemed completely uninterested in learning the triple cork — had an idea: What if he tried landing a backside 1620 with a Japan grab during his run?

It was a trick the 20-year-old had never attempted before, not even in practice.

Kotsenburg talked to his coach and called his brother, telling them about his idea. They both encouraged him to go for it.

And with that, one of the greatest pieces of Olympic snowboarding lore was born. During his first run of the final, Kotsenburg approached the last jump and proceeded to stomp that backside 1620 Japan on his first-ever attempt.

It was a run devoid of triple corks, but it was stylish and creative from top to bottom while still managing to be highly technical in its own right, thanks in part to that impromptu trick. The judges scored it a 93.50, and it held up for a gold medal, even as other riders were landing triple corks.

“I do random stuff all the time, never make a plan up,” Kotsenburg said at the time. “I had no idea I was even going to do a 1620 in my run until three minutes before I dropped. It’s what I’m all about.”

A similar occurrence happened at the 2022 Beijing Games. During the women’s freeski big air final, Eileen Gu found herself in 3rd place as she prepared to take her final run. She was already guaranteed a medal but was faced with a strategic decision.

Option 1: She could redo her last trick and hope improving upon that score would get her the silver medal. Option 2: She could try a new trick and challenge for the gold medal.

The trick in question was a double cork 1620. Gu had landed a double cork 1440 for the first time earlier that season but had never once attempted a 1620.

She went with Option 2, nailed the landing on her first try, and ultimately skied away with the gold medal.

“Even if I didn’t land it, I felt it would send a message out to the world and hopefully encourage more girls to break their own boundaries,” Gu said afterward. “That was my biggest goal going into my last run. I reminded myself to have fun and enjoy the moment and that, no matter what, I was so grateful to even have this opportunity to even be here.”

This strategy may seem loose and carefree, and befitting of a sport in which athletes often talk about “vibes.” But that belief would discount the amount of preparation that goes into moments like these, as mental training can be just as important as the physical variety.

The key, according to many athletes, is visualization.

“You can do a trick for the first time ever in an event and ski away from it,” Mac Forehand says.

Forehand, a 24-year-old U.S. freeskier aiming for his second Olympic appearance, would know firsthand. At the 2023 X Games, he needed a perfect score to have any chance of winning the men’s big air contest, so he opted to try a 2160 for the first time ever.

Although Forehand fell on his first attempt, he tried the trick once again during his final run. This time he landed the 2160, which included a stylish Cuban grab, and ended up with his first X Games victory.

“We all think about tricks a lot, so you're just thinking a lot about what you want to do in your head,” Forehand explained. “And when you think about it so much in your head, it just works the first time [you try it] on snow, for the most part.”

Watch the video of Gu’s double cork 1620 (below), starting at the 1:10 mark, and you can clearly see an example of this visualization in action. Before she drops in, she can be seen repeatedly twisting her body as if she’s about to initiate a rotation. As Gu described it, she’s visualizing the takeoff and waiting for one that feels right to her.

Colby Stevenson also has an Olympic medal that serves as a testament to the power of visualization.

As the American freeskier arrived at the Beijing big air venue in 2022, he had modest expectations. He was a slopestyle specialist who rarely competed in big air contests. The times he had competed in big air, he never ended up on the podium.

“I'm gonna go try some tricks I haven't done and hope for the best,” Stevenson told himself.

He decided to come out swinging in the Olympic final, attempting a nose butter triple cork 1620 on his opening run. Stevenson had recently learned a nose butter double cork but had yet to try the triple-cork version on that Beijing jump, even in practice.

The first attempt was unsuccessful, as Stevenson overrotated the trick. But that gave him enough confidence to know that he could in fact get enough rotation for the landing.

Rather than play it safe with an easier trick, the 24-year-old opted for a redo on Run 2. This time, he stomped the nose butter triple cork 1620 and had one highly-competitive score on the board.

“I definitely visualized it for a couple years before that and just waited for the right moment,” Stevenson recalls. “I was basically telling myself, ‘Just add one more flip to the trick I'd already been really good at.’”

The strategy paid off for Stevenson. In big air, athletes need two scores, so he went for one of his bread-and-butter tricks, a switch double cork 1800, during his final run. That gave him another high score and vaulted him into silver-medal position.

Sometimes an athlete enters a contest with the mindset of trying something new, as Stevenson and Kotsenburg did. Sometimes an athlete makes a strategic decision in the middle of a contest, as Gu did. And sometimes an opportunity presents itself that’s too good to pass up.

“I've had a couple [big air] events where I've tried a new trick that I've never done before on my final jump in the event,” Olympic freeski slopestyle champion Alex Hall explained. “It's because I've landed the tricks before that I wanted to, and I have this extra try, so I might as well go for this new, crazy trick that I haven't done before.”

Of course, trying something new can be a scary proposition, especially when you factor in the nerves that often come with competing and the risk factor of these sports.

Before the 2023 World Championships, U.S. freeskier Troy Podmilsak had a “weird dream” in which he died while attempting a triple cork 2160, according to a story he told to Olympics.com.

“I remember sitting at lunch with my coach and telling him I'm not gonna do [the trick],” he told Olympics.com. “I’d just had some weird dream where I died trying it and I was so nervous I felt ill. It was just the most awful feeling I ever felt.”

No skier had ever landed a forward triple cork 2160 in competition, and Podmilsak had never even attempted it on snow, only on an airbag — and even then, he said he hadn’t actually been successful. To make matters worse, he also had to contend with an injury and strong winds.

But Podmilsak knew it was all or nothing. The 18-year-old had come to Georgia to become a world champion, not to play it safe in hopes of reaching the podium.

After using Run 1 to get one high score on the board, he put his fears aside and tried the triple cork 2160 on Run 2. The result was a history-making trick that looked so effortless the judges initially assumed it was an 1800 instead of a 2160 and scored it as such (as seen in the clip below). After a review, his score was corrected and Podmilsak won his first-ever world title.

Progression has not stopped with the 2160s landed by Podmilsak, Forehand and others. At last year’s X Games, Italian freeskier Miro Tabanelli and Japanese snowboarder Hiroto Ogiwara became the first athletes to land 2340s in their respective sports. Other athletes are finding creative ways to push boundaries with tricks that have less rotation.

With new tricks popping up frequently, it’s hard to say which one an athlete will be inspired to try next, especially with the 2026 Milan Cortina Winter Olympics on the horizon. But whatever it is, even if no one has attempted it yet, someone probably is already picturing it in their mind.