Ross was of course not the first snowboarding halfpipe gold medallist, that honour went to Gian Simmen who came from nowhere to take the title in Nagano in 1998. And despite being from the wrong side of the Atlantic to really give ad-men a hard-on, he still managed to get a couple of interesting endorsements – of which our favourite is this.

Remember 1080 snowboarding? It was one of the original games released for the Nintendo 64 and was, if we’re honest, a bit shit. Especially compared to Goldeneye. As I recall, you couldn’t even spin and grab at the same time.

None of that stopped Gian Simmen signing a deal that saw his face featured on a “limited edition” European version of the game which came out the year he won his medal. And yes, we did end up on a ridiculously nerdy N64 forum finding this picture. The internet is a strange place…

Of course Simmen is far from the only man to sell his image for use in a computer game. Activision tried to make “Tony Hawk’s for snow” with Shaun Palmer Pro Snowboarder (it was never as good) David Benedek and Torah Bright featured alongside others in Amped 2, and the entire Absinthe crew, including Nico Muller, were made into characters for the 2009 XBox game Stoked. There are also the Shaun White games (of which more later) but Gian was (by our reckoning) the first real life rider to be rendered in pixel form.

All the other developers at the time were busy making dreadlocked white dudes with names like “Jurgen Angermann” (seriously!) or Japanese girls with boobs that’d put Pamela Anderson to shame.