PYEONGCHANG, South Korea – Never forget the true motive of the Olympic movement. Do not let the glitz of the Opening Ceremonies obfuscate it, the performance of the athletes cloud it, the harmonious gathering of countries confuse it. The Olympics exist to make money and enrich those who run them, and whenever their racket runs into conflict with morality, as it did Monday afternoon, the winner is a foregone conclusion.

Money rules. Greed triumphs. Misplaced priorities win gold.

The women’s snowboarding slopestyle contest should not have run Monday. The whipping wind — the same wind that prompted the International Ski Federation earlier in the day to cancel an alpine-skiing event — flung snowboard riders about the course at Phoenix Snow Park and impelled others simply to pull up before jumps, lest they subject themselves to shattered bones or shredded ligaments. Of the 50 runs, 41 included a stumble or crash. Luckily, there were no serious injuries. American Jamie Anderson won her second consecutive slopestyle gold medal, and it felt to her fellow riders more like a footnote than something to celebrate.

“It’s just a [expletive] show,” Dutch rider Cheryl Maas said, and she spoke for a vast majority of athletes who voiced their concerns to contest officials and were summarily ignored. This surprised exactly nobody. FIS consigns snowboarding to steerage at every opportunity possible, and in this case, the riders were convinced their well-being was sacrificed to the altar of the television networks that pay billions of dollars to program the Olympics.

In a statement, FIS did not address these concerns. It said “the first priority for FIS is the safety of the athletes and FIS would never stage a competition if this could not be assured” and that “the nature of outdoor sports also requires adapting to the elements.”

Surely if the first priority for FIS were the safety of the athletes, it would have, you know, consulted the athletes and not relied on the word of their coaches. It didn’t. And, hey, while FIS is lying about its priorities, might as well mix in a dollop of victim blaming for good measure. This is classic, feckless, governing-body garbage. It is as gross as it is typical.

View photos Carla Somaini of Switzerland was among the many riders who crashed in the women’s snowslope final. (Getty) More

The Olympics run through Feb. 25. The slopestyle contest did not need to happen Monday. TV needed it to. With the cancellation of the giant slalom, a hole tore open in NBC’s primetime programming. Both rounds of slopestyle filled it, if not quite ably.

Compared to what the riders throw in better conditions, the runs were an abomination, unworthy of their quadrennial stage. Anderson tempered hers to account for the wind and didn’t unleash any of the double-flipping, triple-twisting madness that defines her. The sport’s considerable progress since the Sochi Games never revealed itself, and a day after American Red Gerard’s spectacular gold-medal-winning run, the women paled because FIS filched their opportunity to thrive.

“When it’s alpine, they have a higher status,” said Norwegian rider Silje Norendal, one of the world’s best, who fell in her second run and finished fourth. “And they really want a good show. I feel like we’re definitely coming in second. We can actually get super hurt. And it’s just really unfair. It’s such a young sport. It’s just sad that we all feel sometimes that we’re coming in second.”

Norendal understood as well as anyone the hazards of the course. At a windy test event here in 2016, she crashed, broke her arm and spent four days in the hospital with internal injuries. During training this week, Australian teenager Tess Coady blew out her knee after the wind grabbed ahold of her.

On Sunday, the qualifying round was canceled due to excessive winds, and Norendal said contest director Roby Moresi told her: “If it’s scary, I’m not gonna make you girls go.” She wasn’t certain what caused Moresi to relent. After postponing the contest, FIS, in consultation with coaches, green-lighted it.

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