Peering down the ski slope at the vertical jump and giant crash mat below us, we begin to brick ourselves. We're on a snowboard at an indoor slope in Manchester, about to catch the most serious air of our lives ('jump', in normal speak), and we're on the verge of turning the ice into a chocolate snowshake.

- See all the pictures of ZOO's epic faceplant!

Watching Ben Kilner, the young Brit winter Olympic hopeful, launch himself into the air and all doing sorts of terrifying somersaults, we try to imagine ourselves doing the same thing. But all we can envisage is shooting skyward off the side of the ramp, then ending up spread-eagled on the ice. In a similar condition to fly when it encounters a car windscreen on the motorway.

In timely fashion, Sean Kingston’s Beautiful Girls is playing on the sound system, and all we can hear are the lyrics 'suicidal, suicidal…'

A final piece of advice from Scottish pro boarder Ben, namely 'point the board straight at the ramp, and go really fast', and it's time. ZOO are up, heart pumping, and setting off towards our fate. Our intentions of taking off from the ramp, grabbing the board in mid-air while showing off to the ZOO photographer vanish in a puff of our icy breath.

Faceplant!
We hurtle towards this dirty trousers-inducing ski jump, fly up the ramp and… belly flop preposterously into the middle of the oversized airbag.

It takes a while to wriggle off the thing – we're stuck like an upside down woodlouse. Crawling off the mat, we sit next to ZOO snapper to watch the pros follow on, doing double back flips and other improbable manoeuvres. We realise just how tricky this skill is – and just how mad these snowboarder types are.

Smash landings
Ben Kilner is hoping to represent Team GB at the Winter Olympics in Vancouver, Canada in 2010. His speciality is the halfpipe, where you snowboard up the sides of a huge scooped-out icy run, catapulting yourself into the sky either side, throwing all manner of mid-air shapes, before righting yourself and landing perfectly again on the lip of the halfpipe.

'When I'm up in the air, twisting and turning,' Ben tells ZOO, 'all I can see down below is a very hard-looking surface. The margin for error is tiny. I've got an area of about this size to land on [Ben spreads his hands apart like a man describing a moderately sized trout].'

ZOO gulps, imagining our multiple That's Gotta Hurt special after they scrape us off the halfpipe floor.

For a man who (mostly) defies sickening injury on a daily basis, Ben is not what you'd expect. We'd anticipated a dude with the ego of Cristiano Ronaldo, the hand gestures of Usain Bolt, and the lingo of a British-accented Keanu Reeves. But instead this young Olympic sportsman was as decent and down-to-earth as you can get. Or so we thought…

What a pranker!
Ben gives ZOO a private lesson in 'carving', which has nothing to do with Sunday roasts, but is all about cutting S-shapes into the slope on your board. We're feeling rather pleased with our progress and sit gurning gormlessly at the ZOO camera below.

Little do we know that Ben is planning a wee practical joke at our expense. The cheeky Olympic prankster suddenly swoops down the slope at sound barrier-breaking velocity and pulls a kind of snowboarder handbrake turn right behind us, burying us in an avalanche of freezing wet white stuff. Bloody snowboarders. Get back on your tea tray and jog on, son!

ZOO's sorry attempt at catching air came courtesy of SEGA's new Wii Sports game Mario & Sonic At The Olympic Winter Games, released on 16 October. Watch the trailer below.

Mario, Sonic and their friends are back! But this time they've brought along a few new faces as they take to the snow and ice in the world's greatest winter sporting event. The competition is hottest than ever, with realistic controls bringing you even closer to the action. Go head-to-head with family and friends, or work together as a team while you ski, board, skate and even defy gravity in your bid to victory.

- More about Mario & Sonic At The Olympic Winter Games

- More about the big crashmat we landed on!