The More Powder She Gets, the More Fun It All Seems

It was like Michael Jordan sneaking outside to a nearby playground and shooting hoops.

During the seventh game of the NBA Finals.

At halftime.

On a clear Alpine afternoon blanketed with the purity of snow and sport, the Winter Olympics’ new cover girl did the strangest thing imaginable.

Before snowboarding for gold, Hannah Teter snowboarded for fun.

During the short break between the qualifying and final sessions of the women’s halfpipe Monday, while clinging to a lead, she clung to her roots.

When nobody was looking, she persuaded U.S. teammate Gretchen Bleiler to join her on an empty ski lift, which they rode to the top of the mountain with their boards, then climbed off.

There were guards everywhere.

“I’m like, ‘Uh-oh,’ ” Teter said.

There were rope barriers everywhere.

“I was like, ‘Gretchen, we are doing this,’ “she said.

They carefully hiked out of sight, slipped under the ropes, jumped on their snowboards, and were gone.

“Shaved some powder,” Bleiler said.

“Awesome powder,” Teter added.

Down they went, snowboarding between the trees, around common sense, over safety concerns, down a steep slope until they ended up at the entrance to the halfpipe.

Where, about an hour later, relaxed and laughing and kissing the camera and dancing in their boots, they did it all for keeps.

Teter won gold, Bleiler won silver, and America had its new, um, ice queen.

“Yeah, well, yeah, hmmm, I don’t think I’ll change,” said Teter, 19, her smile nearly bursting into laughter at the thought.

She was leaning back in her baggy, white pinstriped sweat suit. A flag-patterned kerchief was wrapped around her neck. Her iPod headphones were finally out of her ears.

“Maybe smile a little bit brighter. Get my teeth whitened for the cameras. Definitely have to bring my [hair] straightener everywhere I go.”

With her voice inflection and constant inclusion of a sleepy “Yeahh” into her speech, she sounds like the infamous laid-back Jeff Spicoli character from “Fast Times at Ridgemont High.”

With her ruddy nose, darting eyes and scraggly dirty blond locks sticking out of a white ski cap, she actually looks like Spicoli.

Just substitute maple syrup for surfing.

“Oh yeah, it’s all about the syrup, do not forget the syrup,” said the rural Vermont native, who officially includes eating pancakes with syrup as one of her hobbies.

Her No. 1 officially listed hobby? Would you believe, snowboarding?

How many other top athletes actually feel that way about their sports?

“Well, yeah, it’s like, fun,” Teter said, clearly surprised that anyone would be surprised.

In an Olympic movement increasingly filled with professionals for whom this is just another paycheck, Teter is the joyous chorus we must not forget.

Amid a collage of flag-wrapped robots, remember the one who wore her flag like a cape, then also wrapped it around her runner-up, then accepted the winning award with a giant “Whooa.”

In a two-week period during which the flights of skiers and snowboarders will be immortalized on film forever, the most important run might be the one nobody saw.

“The whole thing was amazing,” said her older brother Amen, who watched her victory with tears. “I was like, ‘If she gets a gold medal today, oh my gosh.’ But I don’t think it’s hit her like this is some huge responsibility.”

The sport was only fun when she learned it from two older brothers while growing up in a house at the end of a dirt road, the children of former hippies who tried to keep it simple.

She remembers it as only one of many sibling competitions, like frontyard trampoline jumping.

“Or, like, who could hold their breath under water,” she said, laughing.

So she wasn’t exactly holding her breath on Monday. She was so stressed before each run, she was dancing at the top of the halfpipe.

“It relaxes my shoulders,” she said. “I think we were doing the Macarena up there.”

She was so stressed immediately after each run, she was playing her psychedelic-designed board as if it were a guitar.

“Hey, hey,” she said.

She sneaked up and snowboarded down the hill before her final run because, well, why wouldn’t she?

“It ain’t no thing,” she said.

Then, just before that final run, it became clear that her first run had already clinched the gold medal.

Sunday, when this happened to men’s gold medalist Shaun White, he cruised through his final run and accumulated barely half of his first-run score.

Teter did just the opposite.

“My coach grabbed me and was like, ‘Victory lap! Victory lap!’ ” she recalled. “I’m like, ‘No way.’ I was going as big as possible. I was so representing.”

She turned up her iPod, which was set to Strive Roots, a new hybrid band that cut a debut album whose name cannot be printed in a family newspaper.

Then she indeed represented, topping her first-run score by two points, ending in a flourish that included a trademark 900 spin that’s more than two rotations in midair.

“Even though she had already won it, she went for it,” said U.S. teammate Elena Hight. “That’s how she is. I’m super-stoked for her.”

Expect America to soon be the same, with Teter bound for magazine covers and high school girls’ walls.

“Hey, I like the gloss,” she said, whatever that means.

She will sell not just her talent, but her texture, a real quality that will endure longer than that gold.

“Bode Miller is the bad boy; she’s the good role model, with a good message,” said Amen, who is also her agent. “But it doesn’t need to get too serious.”

In other words, you’d better figure out the definition of “gloss,” and quick.

“We’re not much for media training,” Amen said, smiling. “We’ve tried it.”

Take Teter’s plans for a gold medal.

“There’s lots of things you can do with it,” she said, giggling.

She paused.

“I’m going to hang it on the wall? Is that a good thing to do with it?”

She thought for another moment.

“I’ll put it in our playhouse in Vermont,” she said, eyes wide. “I’ll staple it to the wall. With a real staple gun.”

She paused again, the idea of Monday’s victory becoming just another trampoline jump or breathing contest giving her peace, while giving us perspective.

“Yeahhh.”

Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Plaschke, go to latimes.com/plaschke.