Winter Olympics Snowboarding Big Air: What are the rules and score?

The Winter Olympics are going big in 2018 with the introduction of snowboarding big air.

The jealous younger sibling of the Summer Olympics, the Winter Olympics have long sought to attract as robust an audience as their warm-weather counterpart — in everything from numbers to demographics (see: Millennials).

Part of the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) strategy for so doing has been to try and incorporate more events from the X Games, which led to the introduction of slopestyle in Sochi’s 2014 Winter Games.

The IOC Executive Board is upping the ante in a big way for the 2018 Games in PyeongChang with the introduction of big air, which has been a staple of the X Games since the 1990s and made its debut at the FIS Snowboarding World Championship in 2003.

Part of the reason it’s taken so long for the Olympics to embrace the big air discipline is because Olympic events must be open to both male and female athletes.

Women’s participation in big air has lagged behind their inclusion in other winter events, from half pipe to parallel slalom, in international competitions including the X Games and the World Championships. In the latter, men competed in the discipline for 12 years before women were allowed in.

That’s thanks in part to the nature of the event, in which riders fly off a giant launch ramp to perform aerial tricks. Women tend to be smaller and lighter than men, and thus they fly higher and faster.

Is it dangerous? You betcha, but these athletes continue to push themselves, to the thrill and amazement of audiences around the world.

What are the rules of big air?

Big air is a freestyle event in which riders take off down a launch ramp and attempt three tricks, though they only get the one jump. After determining the speed they’ll seek to hit, riders set off down an in-ramp, at the end of which there’s a table with a kicker ramp. The competitors then launch off the kicker ramp, perform their three trick attempts, and attempt to land cleanly.

PyeongChang’s ramp will be the world’s largest, at 49 meters with a maximum slope angle of 40 degrees.

Olympic snowboarding big air consists of a qualification round and a final round. There are two runs in the qualification round, and judges will take the better of the two scores. The 12 athletes who score the highest in the qualification round move on to the final.

In the final round, riders get three runs. The scores from two best runs are combined for the final result. However, riders are required to spin their tricks in different directions on the two runs that count for the scoring, e.g. frontside and backside or switch frontside and switch backside.

How is big air scored?

A panel of six judges decide the awards in the discipline, judging riders based on the D-E-A-L criteria: difficulty, execution, amplitude, and landing.

For difficulty, the judges are essentially looking for more rotation; big air theoretically provides riders the chance to get in four full rotations, and judges know that. But riders don’t have to throw down a triple cork 1440 to earn top marks; adding difficult grabs or landing switch can up the scoring of a three-rotation trick.

In execution, the judges want to see control above all else. Riders should hold their grabs as long as possible.

Amplitude is where the danger factor comes in; judges will actually look to see if the rider performs his or her trick at the right time of the jump. Performing the trick on the other side of the jump’s apex can lead to disastrous results.

Finally, landing is exactly what it sounds like: did the rider land in a controlled manner and with the trick completed?

On each run, the judges will discount the highest and lowest scores and average the four that remain. Riders’ final result is determined by combining the two best scores.

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With slopestyle debuting in 2014 and now big air, Olympic snowboarding is becoming appointment television in the Winter Olympics. If all goes well with snowboard big air in 2018, the IOC could look to add the event in freestyle skiing in the future, as well.