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Winter Olympics Snowboarding Parallel giant slalom: What are the rules and score?

By Staff

14th December 2017, Pra di Tori Slope, Carezza, Italy; FIS Snowboard World Cup, Parallel Giant Slalom; Christoph Mick (ITA) (Photo by Pierre Teyssot/Action Plus via Getty Images)
14th December 2017, Pra di Tori Slope, Carezza, Italy; FIS Snowboard World Cup, Parallel Giant Slalom; Christoph Mick (ITA) (Photo by Pierre Teyssot/Action Plus via Getty Images) /
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The parallel giant slalom is one of the oldest snowboarding Winter Olympic sports, but what are the rules and how do they score the event?

When snowboarding made its debut at the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, parallel giant slalom was one of two events along with halfpipe. For the sixth consecutive Winter Olympics, parallel giant slalom will be a featured competition and it will close out the 2018 games.

But what is parallel giant slalom and what are the rules?

Basically, it’s two snowboarders racing side-by-side down parallel courses. At the 2018 Games, there will be a qualification round and head-to-head elimination rounds.

In the qualification round, each competitor will go down the two courses (blue and red) once. The two times will be added together and the 16 fastest cumulative times will advance to the elimination round. Competitors will be going down the course at the same time as a competitor, but are not competing head-to-head in the qualification round.

The 16 riders who advanced to the elimination rounds will be seeded based on their times and put into a bracket. From there, it’s head-to-head eliminations in Round of 16, quarterfinals, semifinals and the medal finals.

There are five infractions that could result in a disqualification:

  • False start
  • Disturbing their opponent during a run
  • Passing through the wrong gate
  • Failing to execute a turn on the outside of a gate
  • Not finishing the run with at least one foot fixed to the board

In 2018, head-to-head elimination race will consist of one run down the course and the racer with the better qualification time chooses which course they want to go down. Then whoever crosses the finish line first advances, so the qualification time advantage becomes more significant.

There are two final races, one to determine the gold medal and another to determine the bronze.

Next: Best Olympian from each state

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