Olympic Snowboarding – Men’s and Women’s Slopestyle
We watched the Women’s Slopestyle qualifying and finals the other day and the Men’s qualifying last night. The men’s final finished up after midnight EST and I haven’t watched it yet. What a cool sport – I’ve never watched it before (but have watched the half-pipe competition for years).
Slopestyle involves riders on a course consisting of three sets of obstacles (rails, jumps, and various other park features) at the top of the run followed by three jumps at the bottom of the run. Points are scored for originality, amplitude, and the execution of the tricks.
Julia Marino used a huge second run Sunday to win silver in women's snowboard slopestyle, giving the United States its first medal of these Olympics. On the men’s side, Canadians won gold and bronze with Redmond Gerard of the US finishing fourth.
The sky was absolutely perfect and there were camera’s everywhere to capture the riders. Here’s one rider doing a Backside Rodeo (backflip) off a “park feature” that looks like a watch tower on the Great Wall of China.
Here’s another picture of a rider getting big air off the last jump while spinning a “1260” (3.5 revolutions) while holding the board (called a Cab Spin). The rider from China, who won silver, hit a 1440 off the second followed by a 1620 off the last jump. Incredible!!
February 7th, 2022 at 10:07 AM ^
I was just thinking about the Olympics.
What day do they start?
February 7th, 2022 at 10:18 AM ^
Opening ceremony was on Feb 4, but they did have some preliminary competitions the day before.
Closing ceremony is on Feb 20.
February 7th, 2022 at 10:12 AM ^
Slopestyle is so much fun to watch. Helps when the other sport on is luge, which sucks
February 7th, 2022 at 11:27 AM ^
^^^ name checks out
February 7th, 2022 at 10:47 AM ^
Snowboarding freestyle competitions just seem so much more interesting than ski freestyle competitions. Not sure why, but just the style and look of it is just more appealing to me. Maybe it's from my youth when I used to skate, I don't know.
Regardless, snowboard freestyle events are my favorite to watch in the Olympics.
ETA: Also love watching women's figure skating. My mom had me in figure skating lessons as a kid with my sister, and we watched a lot of figure skating together before she passed.
February 7th, 2022 at 10:55 AM ^
From your youth? You should hop back on a board, it is a totally different ball game older, haha.
February 7th, 2022 at 12:37 PM ^
IMO, it is just easier to rotate on a board because you have two points of contact, versus one for each ski. You can see snowboarders that are coming up a bit short on their rotation and manage to whip the board around at the last second. That is much harder on skis.
My personal experience bears this out too. I was only a decent snowboarder, but was able to do some basic tricks, while I could do much less on skis despite having been on skis for longer.
We are a hockey family, but my girls started out figure skating, so we enjoy watching that as well. I am glad it brings back those family memories for you, too.
February 7th, 2022 at 12:45 PM ^
Skiing is much easier to learn and be decent. However, it is harder to master and get to the advanced levels.
I think they are doing bigger spins on skis right now though, in the xgames I think someone went over 2000°.
February 7th, 2022 at 3:02 PM ^
I would think it's easier to rotate faster on skis because you can keep your body tighter. Iron cross your legs are in a single straight line while on boards, your legs are set a fixed width apart. So it takes more force to spin with a wider stance and therefore is harder to spin as fast.
Also easier to slow the fast spin on skis because once you separate your cross, you'll naturally slow down due to conservation of momentum principals.
From a physics standpoint, this at least makes sense.
February 7th, 2022 at 10:52 AM ^
Love your enthusiasm for finding a new discipline you like.
A quick correction of a term. In snowboarding Cab is a switch frontside spin. So basically riding backwards and spinning so that after the first 90° of rotation you are facing down the slope toward your landing.
Can’t wait to see some of the run videos. The course looked really cool and absolutely huge. I always love how Red rides. Always taking a unique line pretty much pioneering hitting the hip feature instead of a straight jump. Sad to see Dusty didn’t make finals, I lived in his home snow town, Mammoth Lakes, for a while so I always like seeing the Mammoth kids show out.
February 7th, 2022 at 12:02 PM ^
Thanks for the correction; I just saw a guy spinning and grabbing the board!
The announcers mentioned where “Cab” originated, so I went to the googles to make sure I got it right. Steve Caballero, a skate boarder, is credited with inventing this trick in 1981 (Tony Hawk invented the front side grab). #TheMoreYouKnow
February 7th, 2022 at 12:52 PM ^
Good stuff. It is a learning curve trying to figure out the language and what is going on. Like I said I snowboarded and lived at a big resort and still definitely don’t know it all.
Then there are the flips. Michal chuck, crippler, misty, rodeo (back and frontside which look quite different), underflip, wildcat, cork. It’s pretty gnarly. I can hardly name the tricks as they do them anymore the progression has been so crazy.
February 7th, 2022 at 1:08 PM ^
When watching the slo-mo, one of the announcers said "Oh, that's actually a (trick name) when I said it was (other trick name) during the ride!" Pretty honest of her.
February 7th, 2022 at 11:00 AM ^
i was watching with interest as the site has been the target of some barbs (the big air venue in particular)...
Its fascinating in that there is not a lot of precipitation there, although it is plenty cold - same with the downhill sites i believe. So all the snow is artificial.
I don't think the camera does this event justice, as it is hard to really understand how high these athletes get in the air.
February 7th, 2022 at 11:39 AM ^
If you watched any of the alpine skiing events yesterday you saw skier and after skier falling as the 100% artificial snow turns to ice when the temp drops. Multiple participants are complaining about the horrible snow conditions there and it's only through divine providence and dumb luck that someone hasnt been severely injured (yet).
I have an idea. How about if a country bids on the winter olympics the first question the olympic committee asks is "do you any fucking snow on the mountains you want to use for a venue?" And if the answer is no you thank them for their time and politely ask them to leave the room.
February 7th, 2022 at 12:31 PM ^
I totally agree. When I first saw it reported that Beijing was getting the Winter Olympics, I thought it had to be a mistake and they meant summer.
Also, when a bunch of your non-indoor events are ~150 miles from the host city, that city shouldn't be hosting. Not that former summer hosts can't also host the winter games if they're located in a suitable climate, but there is some charm too in having the winter games in smaller, less well known places.
And finally, why does it look like the Big Air venue was built on top of a nuclear power plant?
February 7th, 2022 at 1:04 PM ^
When the Summer Olympics were in Atlanta, the baseball venues were in the Warner Robbins area (1:45 drive/100 miles) and around Macon (not in Macon as they wanted too much money to host). Beautiful baseball facilities that help produce Little League World Series champs for both baseball and softball.
Rowing and yachting were held in Savannah (4 hours) and there is a nice monument there (https://www.vacationsmadeeasy.com/images/poi/13252/11821.jpg) along the shipping channel,
White water rafting was up north in the TN/GA border near McCaysville, GA (2 hours).
None are Nuclear facilities, like the horribly awful location above, but 150 mile drive is not unprecedented.
February 8th, 2022 at 2:32 PM ^
that was true in Sochi as well--also the last time Putin threatened to invade the Ukraine
February 7th, 2022 at 12:42 PM ^
It's less ice than really chalky hardpack that's totally unpredictable in terms of whether skiers can get their edges to carve or whether they'll just bounce off. All high end race courses are super icy. In prepping courses, race managers will literally inject water into the course to make sure they are super firm. But elite racers produce so much down force onto their edges, and their edges are so sharp (even junior race coaches all carry tourniquet kits) that they can reliably carve on icy courses that are based in at least some natural snow.
But the artificial snow firms up entirely differently, makes the margin of error much smaller and makes races much more of a lottery. Mikaela Shiffrin was late on the gate where she fell in the GS, but she can almost always recover and manage turns like the one she fell on because she's so technically good. But her edge just didn't catch on the crappy snow.
February 7th, 2022 at 2:34 PM ^
Yes, this is a clusterf**k. Damn shame for these talented athletes, that their skill is robbed due to the IOC and their moneygrab. It sickens me.
February 7th, 2022 at 9:02 PM ^
That’s not really accurate. All race courses are iced down. It’s always ice and that makes it fast. They do everything they can to make it ice. Not sure how artificial iced snow compares to natural iced snow.
This also isn’t the first time artificial snow was used I believe.
This is the first time a course was made from nothing where there wasn’t snow before.
On the plus side athletes are saying the surface, because it’s 100% artificial, is much more consistently flat. No surprises
on the negative side, apparently all the courses are unusually steep which creates more falls and danger. Also on the negative side they never skied this course before, especially the downhill, so they don’t know where they can push it. But it’s the Olympics so they have to risk it.
February 7th, 2022 at 11:13 AM ^
I watched both events as well. I don't know anything about Slopestyle maybe someone can clear this up for me. Are all of the features equally weighted when it comes to scoring?
It felt like the event was basically won or lost on the three jumps. I don't think a single person fell on the first 3 rail features and it didn't really appear like there was a ton of variation in what people were doing up top.
February 7th, 2022 at 12:08 PM ^
I don't know for sure, but the announcers said that creativity and originality are mostly judged in this section. They opined how the judges might score higher if you used the "watch tower". I'm guessing that doing a Backside Rodeo would give a better score than just sliding off (which some riders did).
February 7th, 2022 at 12:42 PM ^
Actually, Red's last run was essentially ended when he reverted on a landing (had to flip 180) off of one of the top features (the roof, I think). After that he knew that beating his previous score was impossible, and he just took it easy the rest of the way.
February 7th, 2022 at 12:12 PM ^
Thought China should've won. That boarders run was insane.
Bummed for Gerard to miss the podium. Excited to see what he and Fitzsimmons do in big air and next time around.
February 7th, 2022 at 1:05 PM ^
I had Max as my clear number one. Maybe some feels on his redemption story too. Then a toss up of 2-4. I like Reds creativity and how he hits the hip. Su’s spin style was cool though, he had differently tweaked out grabs that looked cool.
February 7th, 2022 at 2:38 PM ^
Dude what? The entire snowboard community is freaking out about the judging. Parrot completely missed his grab (actually grabbed his knee which is unacceptable) on his winning run! Complete hose job.
The judges for the Olympics are from FIS (ski federation) and don’t know Jack shit about snowboarding. Which was obvious last night.
February 7th, 2022 at 2:44 PM ^
I haven’t seen the replay, but supposedly Max grabbed his knee instead of the board during one of the sectors on his gold-winning run. Apparently the judges missed that and overscored him.
edit: what Montucky said
February 7th, 2022 at 7:09 PM ^
I totally missed that. I admit I only watched a couple replays while my attention was divided.
that is a pretty big deal though.
February 8th, 2022 at 12:22 AM ^
Funny you mention the absolutely perfect sky. You have the Beijing Weather Modification Office to thank for that. They have been firing rockets with a silver iodide payload to seed the clouds, initially to cause rain in Beijing to clear the smog and now to make the clouds precipitate before they reach the Olympic venues.