KRASNAYA POLYANA, Russia — It is time for snowboarders to take back their sport. They talk about it all the time. How the International Ski Federation runs snowboarding's Olympic program. How the International Olympic Committee never listens to their gripes. Well, this is where they can do something about it. The bumpy, slushy joke of a halfpipe at Rosa Khutor Extreme Park offers riders the greatest opportunity possible to make a stand against the overlords who don't care about them.

Until those in charge of salvaging the halfpipe can bring it up to competition-level standards, every rider, from Shaun White and Iouri Podladtchikov to Torah Bright and Hannah Teter on down, should boycott the Sochi Games. Come together as a sport. Rage against the institutions that seem happy to hurl them into substandard conditions to fulfill a few hours of prime-time programming. Say no to anything but a halfpipe that will allow them to throw the sorts of tricks that made snowboarding such an appealing sport to the Olympics in the first place.

[Related: Snowboarders want Sochi halfpipe event postponed]

To call the relationship between snowboarding and the Olympics dysfunctional is an insult to dysfunction. They're like a divorced couple that lives together for tax purposes. The IOC gets the cachet of a sport that appeals to young viewers. Snowboarding gets an audience that dwarfs any the X Games ever will provide. And though the mutual benefits behoove both sides, the power in this relationship is the snowboarders' as long as they're willing to grab hold of it.

So far, they've been far more talk than action. Teter, the gold medalist in 2006, said after a Monday night practice session that "they should push [the competitions] back," though she admitted that getting all the riders to agree was a long shot. White, the impresario who stands to lose the most from a bad pipe, said the conditions prevented him from throwing his best trick, the cab double 1440, but he did not seem inclined to start a mass withdrawal.

Rider after rider pointed out the obvious: With less than 15 hours to recut the pipe and let it set before men's qualifying at 2 p.m. local time, the chances of an Olympic-quality pipe were almost nil. And complicating matters were the warm weather and raindrops that peppered the mountain region as Monday drew to a close, all of which conspired to make a mess of a situation even uglier.

[Photos: Halfpipe conditions worsen with warm Sochi weather]

With all of those variables — the desire for change, the perfect avenue to effect it, an IOC that's particularly vulnerable with yet another thing in the Sochi Games going wrong and the legitimate fear of putting on a mediocre performance that doesn't come close to showcasing the beauty and grace of their sport — never has there been a better time for the snowboarders to set a list of demands, starting with a very simple one.

Let us do our best.

This is not idle whining or excessive bloviating. No matter what anyone thinks of snowboarding — and judging by some of the early backlash when rider Danny Davis told Yahoo Sports that the pipe was "garbage," plenty of people still believe the sport is little more than an excuse to get high and say "stoked" — it is every athlete's right to receive the best possible canvas on which to display his or her talent. And snowboarders, with their incredible spinning prowess and displays of pure power, are unquestionably athletes. People who believe otherwise ought to reconsider such closed-minded prejudice.

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