Olympics 2018: What is the snowboarding grab called the Bloody Dracula — and why?

It’s not an actual vampire, but it is aptly named, as it turns out.

Snowboarding competition at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang got underway on Saturday (a.k.a. late Friday night) with the qualifying runs for the men’s slopestyle events. Among the many impressive tricks thrown by the riders on Saturday was one that couldn’t help but catch your attention: the Bloody Dracula.

Now that’s far from the only interesting name for a snowboarding trick or grab, but not many stop you in your tracks like that. So what is the Bloody Dracula?

We turned to the experts at Transworld Snowboarding for guidance. As you can see in the video below with rider Nils Mindnich, the Bloody Dracula is a grab that sees the rider reach back when the nose of his board is pointed down and use both hands to grasp the tail.

Of course, Olympic snowboarders are doing that off ramps while also pulling off spins at the same time. As the announcers on NBC Sports revealed during Saturday’s slopestyle session, the move gets its name because with both hands behind you, if you jam the nose of your board into the ground while landing, you run the risk of rotating your face directly into the unforgiving ground — and ending up bloodied in the process.

Next: More Olympic snowboarding: What is slopestyle?

A number of riders wiped out on what was a very difficult Pyeongchang slopestyle course on Saturday, but we didn’t see the Bloody Dracula claim any victims. Just know that when you throw caution to the wind and compete against the best snowboarders in the world, it’s not Vlad the Impaler but this grab that can haunt you well into the night.