I just figured it out

So I was looking up images of this guy:

Henrik Harlaut is a natural segue into making fun of Swedish people, skiing, white guys with dreadlocks, the Olympics, etc, but in all of my researching I ran into a previously unknown illuminating fact:

Nine Knights was originally a ski thing.

Doesn't that make way more sense? I remember when, out of nowhere, we started seeing a bunch of Euros building wooden jumps out of castle parts back in 2011, and for some reason nine guys were going to ride there. It was the weirdest promotional contest ever. Was it even a contest? Was it a video shoot? Was it a jam? What was it?

No one knew, we just knew it was called "Nine Knights" and that the promoters liked mega hucks, poorly-armored castles, and alliteration.

I thought something was lost in translation and hoped that maybe this whole "Nine Knights" idea made more sense to the continental Euros that dreamt it up. I could tell right away that we freedom loving Americans were never the target demographic, but I still couldn't get what the deal was.

When I found out it was just a summer-ization of a winter sports event, it explained so much. Because that process (ski or snowboard culture overlaid on mountain biking) has never made sense. Examples:

Anything from the New World Disorder series.

Pretty much anyone from interior B.C.

Short socks, high tops, and an arm band- really dude?

This.

Rampage. Sure, it seems normal now, but look back and tell me that early Rampage stuff wasn't a sad and confused bastardization of freeski and snowboard contests.

These.

The tragic term "brown pow" and the constant need to show "brown pow slashes, bro."

Mountain bikes in the X-Games.

Related: Freeride flicks.

Chilling, bro.