Snowboarder Matty Cox’s Covid nightmare

It is not getting sick that scares snowboarder Matty Cox, but the chance of Covid ruling him out of the Games.

Snowboarder Matty Cox, the big air competitor from Stanwell Park south of Sydney who will routinely pull out a triple twisting backflip metres into the air for a relaxed warm-up training run, has had recurring nightmares.

Not about the brutal impact of mis-cuing one of his biggest tricks, nor the nervousness about competing in his first Winter Olympics on icy courses in minus-20C.

But, like the 2000 other athletes descending on China for the Beijing Games, he dreads Covid-19.

Again, it is not getting the illness that induces anxiety, but the ramifications of the two blue lines on the testing tablet. For getting Covid now would rule him out of the Games.

“I’ve had nightmares over the past few days that I test positive to Covid. It throws in such a curveball because,’’ Cox said.

At the time of our chat over the internet Cox was wearing a tight fitting N95 mask, while sitting in an empty hotel room in Switzerland with the window open for ventilation. He has been keeping well away from others, dining in his room on two-minute noodles and coke from a vending machine.

“There is no one here, the window are open, the doors are shut, but you have no control over it. You can try your hardest and its honestly luck of the draw, such a sketchy situation,’’ he said.

China has introduced such strict testing protocols that some team liaison officers have made official complaints about the brutality of the Covid testing being conducted at Beijing airport for all arrivals.

The Khazakstan team said their team members had such a ‘’horrible experience” with nose bleeding and still having sore throats days later.

“They tried to take out the brain and make a hole in a throat,’’ international relations director Togzhan Khamzina said in a note to the International Olympic Committee, asking for the testing procedures to be more gentle.

“This is causing such a discomfort for all the delegates and they don’t want to do that again.’’

Cox said the measures were extreme but he said China was trying to protect all the athletes.

In PyeongChang four years ago, many athletes came down with Norovirus, which swept through the Olympic village, but unlike now, there were no oppressive countermeasures.

“Lung capacity can change the difference in some sports from being a medallist and not being on the dais, so its understandable, but at the same time you think, ‘Come on guys, we are human, it is not like we are robots to sit inside all day, do our sport and then go back inside’,” Cox said.

Cox will be competing in both the big air — a sky high jump off a kicker — and slopestyle, where there are a succession of rails and jumps along a course.

Both events have only come on to the Olympic program in recent Games. These are events where high risk equals high reward and the best men are performing quad twisting tricks as standard.

At the recent X Games, American Alex Hall nailed a six-rotation spin for victory.

Cox, 23, says he is perfectly positioned for both Olympic events.

“Sometimes you do really well in big air because it's a very quick run, you only have to be focused for a maximum 15 seconds, whereas in slopestyle you have to be more engaged for a longer period of time. There is a sense of maturity in slopestyle. A young buck can be aggressive and bigger in big air because you don’t need to focus for too long.’’

Both events are judged on clean landings and style, as well as the difficulty of the tricks being performed.

“I think the judges really want to push snowboarding in the right direction and that’s not just spin the win,’’ Cox said.

“I think they want to reward clean performances and they want the public to understand its not just take off and chuck your meat and go … (there) has to be an art form to it”.

At this point a discussion about whether ballet lessons could be a secret weapon to enhance style was given short shrift by Cox.

He said the snowboard culture “really grinds my gears and I hate it sometimes”, but adds “and then it’s really cool’’.

“If you were to go to ballet for instance, you kind of get hated on by the snowboarding community.’’

Cox switched to big air when he was 16 after travelling to Austria for a season and discovering there was no halfpipe to train on.

“There were half jumps and rails and I wasn’t going to sit there and do nothing, so I had fun on the jumps and then enjoying the rails so I thought it’s time to hang up the halfpipe and move across to slopestyle,’’ he said.