The trick was born at Donner Ski Ranch in December of 1986. I was freeriding with Tucker Fransen, and I made an attempt at a handplant on a frontside hit. After flipping and twisting, somehow I landed on my feet. Tucker asked, "What the hell was that?" I had no idea, so I kept trying it over and over until I had it under control.

After that, Mike Chantry saw it; he told me I had invented a new trick and had to come up with a name. He called it the, "Jacoby Terror Air," but I shortened it to the J-tear and took out the word "air" so it could be done at contests.

At the World Championships in 1987, a handplant was defined as "planting your hand before your board leaves the snow." But many handplants were done well after your board was above your head. At the meeting the night before the contest, I worked hard to define the new handplant rule to say that your hand must touch the ground before the board, thus making the J-tear legal with an added variation.

So because now the J-tear had a handplant in it (although it was nothing more than a slap of the snow), it was legal to do in contests. In the first World Cup tour in 1987/88, I was the only one doing it, and then that summer Tim Windell and Craig Kelly both learned it at camp.

Today's contest rules are a lot more lenient and allow inverted airs in most events, but it's up to the riders like Haakonsen, Ross Powers, Peter Line, and others who have taken the J-tear a step beyond to continue taking tricks to new and exciting levels-levels that make me wish I were fifteen years younger.