Japanese snowboarder suffers one of the most brutal crashes of the Olympics

During the men’s halfpipe finals, Japanese snowboarder Yuto Totsuka violently crashed while attempting to land a big-air trick, propelling his body headfirst into the snow.

The 16-year-old lost control of the landing, smashing his board directly on the top of the pipe, then bounced off the top rail and flipped upside down in the air resulting in a face-first drilling down the decline of the halfpipe. His momentum took him sliding head-first down the hill to an eventual stop, appearing unconscious for what seemed like an eternity.

Paramedics immediately rushed to his aid, loaded him up on a stretcher and took him away as NBC quickly cut to commercial.

Yuto recently came in third place in the men’s snowboard halfpipe at the US Grand Prix in Snowmass, Colorado in January, this is his first appearance at the Olympics.

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