Winter Olympics 2018: What is slopestyle snowboarding?
Snowboarding aficionados will have multiple events to look forward to watching in the 2018 Winter Games: slopestyle, big air, halfpipe, parallel giant slalom and cross. What is slopestyle, specifically?
The 2018 Winter Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, kick off with the Opening Ceremony on Friday, Feb. 9, and if you’re tuning in specifically to watch snowboarding, the sport will get underway the next day.
Saturday’s first snowboarding event will feature the qualifying runs for the Men’s slopestyle discipline — but what exactly is slopestyle, and how does it differ from the other Olympic snowboarding events?
Slopestyle is what most people think of when they think of snowboarding competitions. It’s a freestyle discipline featuring riders navigating a downhill course peppered with rails, jumps and other obstacles, performing tricks along the way.
The main types of tricks you can expect to see in snowboarding slopestyle are spins, flips, grabs and grinds.
Snowboarding tricks have their own lexicon, and to the uninitiated, it can read like another language. The basics: tricks are always followed by a number (e.g. 540, 720, 1080), which indicates the number of rotations performed. So while a 720 is two full rotations, a 540 is one-and-a-half rotations.
Tricks can be performed two ways: regular (the rider performs the trick in his or her normal direction of riding) or switch (the rider performs the trick in his or her unnatural stance). So, for example, a switch backside 360 means the rider comes off the jump with his or her back foot leading and facing backwards, and spins one full rotation.
Tricks performed in a regular stance aren’t labeled “regular.” So, below, you can see Australian Scotty James performing a frontside 900, leading with his front foot (thus, regular) at the FIS Snowboard World Championships 2018:
Judges will evaluate riders’ runs in four areas: air, degree of difficulty, execution and overall style. Though that last category may seem vague, things the judges look for include how long athletes hold their grabs and if they perform their tricks at the optimal height of the jump.
Taking a cue from the popular X Games and other extreme winter sports competitions, the International Olympic Committee added snowboarding slopestyle to the Olympic programme beginning with the 2014 Sochi Games.
Many snowboarders competing in slopestyle at the 2018 Games will also compete in the newest discipline: big air snowboarding. In slopestyle, riders perform multiple tricks while traversing the downhill course. In big air, snowboarders launch off a giant ramp and perform their best trick in the air.
The men and women who qualified to compete in the Olympic slopestyle competition must have finished in the top 30 of a FIS World Cup event in 2017. The 2014 slopestyle gold medal-winners were both members of Team USA: Sage Kostenburg (men) and Jamie Anderson (women).
Anderson will return to Pyeongchang to defend her title later this month, but Kostenburg is sitting out the Olympics this year, having taken a hiatus from competition following his 2014 win.
Other names to watch for in the 2018 slopestyle competitions are Americans Julia Marino, Chloe Kim and Lindsey Jacobellis for the women and Canadian Max Parrot and Frenchman Pierre Vaultier for the men.
Next: What are the rules of snowboarding slopestyle and how is it scored?
The medal event for men’s slopestyle will take place on Sunday, Feb. 11 at 9:04 p.m. ET. The women’s final run is on Monday, Feb. 12 at 9:06 p.m. ET.