The highlight reel of the Milan Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics was defined by extreme tricks—corkscrews, twists, and flips performed by snowboarders and freestylers.
These aerial feats are complex, but in many cases, they can be traced back to a simple tool: hours spent spinning and spinning large plastic bags.
Over the past 20 years, a number of manufacturers—such as Bagjump, Progression Airbags, and BigAirBag—have perfected the art of creating large plastic landing pads, perfect for budding athletes to push the limits of their abilities and test new tricks throughout the year. Since the 2010 Olympics in Vancouver, athletes such as Shaun White, Kevin Pearce, Danny Davis, and Sage Kotsenburg began to use this type of training more and more, similar to how gymnasts used foam pits.
“Extreme levels of sports are safer because of Bagjump training,” said Martin Rasinger, former snowboarder and founder of the program.
Sites with these programs, relatively few and far between, have become places of advanced training. Wy’East Mountain Academy, a sports-oriented high school in Sandy, Oregon, put a $4 million fund into its slopes last year that is open year-round. The 80-by-200-foot airbag, tossed around a mountain curve and installed using snowcat vehicles, is the largest in North America, and the rarest of small US versions can be found at US Ski & Snowboard headquarters in Park City, Utah, and temporarily at California’s Mammoth Mountain.
Troy Podmilsak, the US freestyle ski jump competitor who achieved a “Triple 18” in Milan during the competition—three off-axis flips combined with five full turns—trained at the Wy’East facility before the Games.
Bagjump says there are about 20 locations around the world decorated with their own landing pads, including their own Banger Park in Scharnitz, Austria.
“As soon as those bags come out, you’re working on doubling up,” said Elijah Teter, Wy’East’s athletic director and former Olympic coach and professional snowboarder. “Now you can see triples and even quads.”
Designing a strong airbag
The history of these bags is a Venn diagram of commercials, extreme sports and, in some cases, stunt crews. Before they became a central part of training, learning advanced tricks might mean trying out on rare days with a lot of new powder—which served as a natural shock absorber for budding athletes—or enduring the pain of repeated hard squats. And after a few powder jumps, the impressions left by the skiers and snowboarders meant the trainees needed to find a new spot.
Rasinger said Fast company got the idea for the oversized training bag after watching the airbag stunt fall at the end of the 1997 film. The gamestarring Michael Douglas, so many times. In fact, he was so inspired that he flew to Los Angeles, tracked down a stunt team, and performed 30-foot snowboard fall exercises. He realized that to work for extreme athletes, such a bag would have to be bigger, softer, and stronger to grip the edge of a steel snowboard.
Rasinger went home to Austria and created a research fund in Innsbruck in 2007; a clip of the early jump was posted on YouTube. Eventually, his company, Bagjump, would settle on a formula: fiberglass construction with PVC adhesive to withstand the forces and cuts of boards and boards. The company has sold several thousands of such bags, mainly in trampoline parks or gyms.
Users can find bags in various sizes, for sports including BMX cycling and even climbing. Olympic training bags, specially designed for different snowboarding disciplines such as halfpipe and slopestyle, range from 50×50 feet to 120×230 feet. The firmness of the bags can be adjusted to give more when learning the trick, and also feel like snow to simulate a real landing.
“It’s soft and safe, because it absorbs impact and doesn’t go crazy like netting or car tires or foam,” Rasinger told ESPN in 2012. “You still get a jump on it. It’s better than hitting a concrete wall – that’s for sure.”
These bags and ramp systems also feature what’s called a dry slope in-run, which mimics the feel—and grip—of snow, giving those trying the trick a more realistic feel during a practice session. That ability to train safely and consistently has made them an elite training group, and one of the many factors that push them to perform at events like the Olympics.
“Bagjump has had a huge impact not only on safety, but on the way the sport has evolved over the years,” said Rasinger.
