PYEONGCHANG, South Korea — You know what grabs your attention at big air snowboarding at the Olympics? When the announcer introduces the first rider like so:

“Cheryl Maas! Coming back from a broken neck!”

The announcer went on to say that Maas, who is 33 and from the Netherlands, had been struggling with bruised heels before coming to Pyeongchang, but to be honest, all I could hear was “broken neck.” My 6-year-old daughter, who has been watching the Olympics, just told me that snowboarding was her new favorite sport and that she loved big air. Yikes.

Big air is a new Olympic event in which snowboarders take an elevator to the top of a 14-story ramp before zipping downhill and into the air, where they attempt the craziest tricks they’ve got in their books until they finally land.

So how do parents deal with their children doing this intensely daredevil sport, where broken bones are common? I thought I’d ask.

Lisbeth and Peter Gasser, the parents of the gold medal favorite Anna Gasser from Austria, take opposite approaches. Lisbeth’s knees go weak when she sees Anna compete, and with good reason. In addition to damaging two vertebrae in her neck, Anna, 26, has banged up various other parts of her body — a knee, a tibia, a heel, an ankle.