The problem remains, though, that they need judges and a subjective scoring system that attempts to apply science and mathematics to a performance that defies quantification. That reality almost killed Mosely’s sport. Snowboarders fight to make sure it doesn’t do the same to them.

It’s a subject that Mosely is intimately familiar with. After winning gold in 1998, he returned to the Games in Utah in 2002 and missed a medal because he challenged the rules by pushing the boundaries of what was considered a legal and lost.

At the time, moguls skiers weren’t allowed to do flips. With moves limited, all runs started to look the same; the sport was becoming boring. Mosely did a horizontal roll that pushed the boundaries. The other competitors loved it. The judges placed him fourth.

Mosely now works for Sprint and is in Turin to file daily video diaries from the Olympics that Sprint subscribers can view directly on their phones. The diaries will also be available on the Internet at sprintenterprise.com/torino/.

Though he’s in a different sport, Mosely understands what the snowboarders are facing.

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“The tricks change so fast, if you retired a year and half ago, you don’t know what’s going on,” Mosely says. “What they need to do is have judges who are current. You need people who know what they’re looking at.”

Ideally, Mosely continues, there’d be no points, no required moves, no rules – just the way it was when freestyle skiing and snowboarding began.

“You don’t put values on each trick,” he says. “You look at the run and say, ‘That’s sick. That wins.’” He calls it the “wow factor.”

Unfortunately, the Olympics needs to put a number on everything. “They want to rationalize it and it’s not rational,” says Mosely. “That’s what makes everyone conform.”

He says he thinks snowboarding won’t let that happen. It remains at its heart a sport driven by kids, fueled by rebels.

“They’ve done a good job resisting,” says Mosely. “The saving grace is that some new trick always comes up.”