It was Wednesday in Livigno, at the finals of the women’s slopestyle snowboard event, and NBC’s Todd Richards was pissed. As New Zealander and 2022 slopestyle gold medalist Zoi Sadowski-Synnott prepared to begin the second of her three runs, Richards marveled at her position in the standings. “She’s currently in fourth place,” said Richards to his broadcast partner, Todd Harris. (Yes, they are both named Todd.) “And by my eye—I’ve seen a lot of contests, Harris, I’ve seen a lot of ’em—she should be in the lead right now.”
Richards grew more and more excited over the course of Sadowski-Synnott’s second run. “Come on, Zoi! Make a statement here!” he urged as she stomped a backside double-cork 1080 off the course’s final ramp. “Back dub 10!” Richards cried. “If that’s not in the lead, I may need medical attention myself.”
A few minutes later, the scores were in. “Todd, get ready for medication,” said Harris, revealing that Sadowski-Synnott’s run had been scored at a relatively pedestrian 77.61, keeping her in fourth place.
“What? Wow. What? What?” said Richards. He was getting mad. And Mad Todd Richards is the best Todd Richards.
“Look,” he said after the broadcast came back from commercial break. “I don’t pretend to even understand here what’s going on with the judging. Zoi Sadowski-Synnott—in my eyes, and probably half the world’s eyes that have seen this—would have her in first.“
Richards knows his stuff. He is a former Olympian who, by bringing his skateboarding background to winter sports in the 1980s and 1990s, helped define snowboarding as it exists today. The other Todd, Harris, is a classic and versatile play-by-play voice who consistently stomps the difficult trick of bringing both personality and clarity to his calls. Bowing to his partner’s deep knowledge of snowboarding tricks and vernacular, Harris generally lets Richards call the snowboarders’ runs in real time—and he takes Richards’ word for it when the analyst is convinced that the judges have screwed something up.
Richards is often convinced of this—and he’s not very good at hiding his feelings. At the 2022 Beijing Games, for instance, when Japan’s Ayumu Hirano executed what Richards deemed to be “the most difficult halfpipe run in the history of halfpipe that has ever been done,” the analyst went ballistic when Hirano’s score temporarily put him in silver-medal position behind Australia’s Scotty James. (Hirano eventually overtook James to win the gold medal.)
“As far as I’m concerned, the judges just grenaded all their credibility,” Richards said. “I know the ingredients of a winning run. I know when I see the best run that’s ever been done in the halfpipe. Try to tell me where you’re deducting from this run. It’s unbelievable that this is even happening. It’s a travesty, to be completely honest with you. I am irate right now.”
This was great sports television. You don’t get that sort of righteous anger from, say, Tara Lipinski and Johnny Weir when they think the judges have messed up!
Now, to be clear, Mad Todd Richards is not a one-note analyst. He’ll sometimes subtly diss the athletes themselves when he thinks they’re playing the judges’ game rather than doing their best work. Earlier in the Games, Richards could barely conceal his disdain for the repetitive nature of the high-rotation tricks being attempted by snowboarder after snowboarder in the finals of men’s big air—an event that is sometimes derided by purists as spin to win. “As my good friend J2 once said, ‘Anything over a 360, you’re just repeating yourself anyways,’ ” he grumbled after Japanese snowboarder Ryoma Kimata landed a 1980 spin in his second run.
Mad Todd was just getting started. At the end of the finals, he was caught on a hot mic disparaging everything he’d just seen. “That was boring,” he said. “That was so boring. The qualifier was way more exciting.”
While he later apologized, he really shouldn’t have. Richards’ candor is what gives him credibility, both from a casual viewer’s perspective and in the snowboarding world. He has long struck me as one of the Olympics’ ultimate Gen X guys, insofar as he often directs his ire at the authority figures who might steer snowboarding away from its expressive, anti-establishment roots and toward formats and tricks that are more constrained, corporate, and—to his eyes—boring.
There is no such thing as a snowboarding third rail that Richards isn’t willing to grind on. In this clip from 2010, he (gently) mocked Shaun White, the ultimate corporate snowboarder: “A, he bought a white Lamborghini. B, he only wears leather now, and tight pants.” Take that, tight pants!
To Richards, a sick run that takes risks and aims high is obviously better than a safer, strategic one focused on score maximization. This perspective explains his incredulity and disappointment during the slopestyle finals. Richards believed the judges were too focused on the rail section of the course, at the expense of a holistic evaluation of the snowboarders’ entire runs. When Japan’s Kokomo Murase impressed with a sequence of difficult tricks during her third run, Richards and Harris alike thought that she deserved to win the gold.
“I think her jump section, that was even more impactful than Zoi’s,” Richards said. “We’re talkin’, like, perfection on all the jumps. Like, this has to take the lead. It has to take the lead.”
When it didn’t—when Murase’s score kept her temporarily in silver-medal position—Mad Todd hit the roof.
“How … how is two 720s beating that? I do not understand this,” he said. “This is the craziest judging … this is the craziest judging since Ayumu’s judging back in 2022. Easy.”
The outrage was just beginning. Immediately following Murase’s run, Sadowski-Synnott threw down a third and final run that was perhaps even better than her second, and Richards expressed preemptive frustration for the underscoring that he knew was imminent.
“Giant backside double 10. How do you not reward that?” he asked. “How do you not reward the gigantic air-time that she had? Biggest so far, 89.8 feet down the landing.”
When the final scores came in, landing Sadowski-Synnott a silver medal and Murase a bronze—Japan’s Mari Fukada took the gold—Richards stayed silent for a good 30 seconds.
“I … I … I’m speechless,” he finally said. “I don’t know. … I don’t understand—nothing to take away from Mari Fukada. But the judging on Zoi’s last run is abysmal. Absolutely abysmal.”
Later, in an Instagram post, Richards vented in a way that he couldn’t on broadcast television.
“That was the worst judging I’ve ever seen in an event, ever. I’m sorry. You guys blew it, judges. You absolutely flipping blew it on this one. How did … that … that was literally … people need new TVs, it was that bad,” he said, his words punctuated by an on-screen caption reading “Gold medal for worst judging ever.”
As long as we’re giving out imaginary medals, let’s make sure that Mad Todd Richards gets one, too. He is the conscience of snowboarding at the Milan Cortina Olympics. May his wrath rain down for many Winter Games to come.