Catching Big Air at Winter Olympics

By Published On: December 11th, 20170 Comments

New to the Olympics for 2018, Big Air Snowboarding is an event featuring a giant ramp and one huge jump. Riders perform a single jump on each run, with just one shot to impress the judges with their biggest and baddest tricks, like the frontside 1080 and the backside 1440.

Although this marks the Olympic debut of Big Air Snowboarding, the sport existed as an event on the world stage for quite some time now having been featured in the FIS World Championships since 2003, as well as at the US Open Snowboarding Championships, Winter X-Games and at Air and Style. Featuring Big Air at PyeongChang is going to go a long way towards modernizing the games, making them more relevant to winter sports fans everywhere.

Big Air is just the latest version of the ever-evolving and versatile sport of snowboarding, which made its Olympics debut at the 1998 Nagano Games in Japan. During the ’98 Winter Games, there were two snowboarding events: the Giant Slalom and the Half-Pipe. During the 2002 Winter Games in Salt Lake City, the Giant Slalom became the Parallel Giant Slalom, where riders began racing head-to-head for a more exciting display. The 2006 Torino Winter Olympics saw the introduction of a third snowboarding discipline, snowboard cross; pitting riders against each other on a track featuring undulating bumps, beams, jumps and tight turns. Two more snowboarding events were added for the 2014 Sochi Games: Parallel Slalom and Slopestyle. Slopestyle is a freestyle discipline featuring jumps, rails, bumps and other obstacles, where a rider is judged on points instead of time. The new Parallel Slalom featured much a much shorter course with tighter turns than the Giant Parallel Slalom, however, it was short-lived as an event and will not return for the 2018 games.

How Are Big Air Competitions Scored?

At first, the scoring system for any winter sports freestyle event can seem confusing, but once you know what the judges are looking for, you’ll be able to score along with them at home. In the inaugural Olympic Big Air competition, each rider will have to perform different tricks in each run to gain maximum points. They will also have to reverse their spin direction with each trick.

Below are four criteria that each competitor will be judged on:

Execution

When assigning execution points, the judges want to see full control of the trick from beginning to end, no wobbles. They want long, firm grabs on the boards performed with great technique, and rotations executed fully. No boot or binding grabs.

Difficulty

The judges are looking for complex, difficult tricks, the more rotation the better. Starting the trick or landing it in fakie will help to gain those difficulty points. Judges will be looking for difficult grabs, blind landings, and unique twists to help set the podium.

Amplitude

Points are allocated for amplitude not only based on the height the rider can reach but also their ability to land in the “sweet spot” on the landing hill. With greater amplitude comes greater risk, and so the judges want to see the riders perform as safely as possible.

Landing

Landing Judges want to see riders land in complete control, rotation must be complete and hands not dragging. Points are deducted for minor fault (one hand drag), medium fault (two hands down), major fault (body contact with snow) and huge fault (the snowboard isn’t the first to touch the snow).

The Big Air Venue For The 2018 Winter Olympics

The Alpensia Ski Jumping Centre in PyeongChang will host to the Big Air competition with the biggest ramp in the sport. Standing at an impressive 49 meters in height, with a slope reaching an astonishing angle of 40 degrees, snowboarders will hit the jump at incredible speeds.

Big Air Schedule, Dates and Times

The Big Air competition will have only a qualification round and a medal round. For the qualifiers, each rider will perform two runs and their best run of the two will count. The top 12 competitors will then progress to the finals. In the final medal rounds, the riders will all perform three runs. The best two scores from the three runs are combined to decide the winners.

Below are the dates and times of the Big Air events. Times are Eastern Standard Time (EST), but we also included the Korea Standard Time (KST).

February 18
Women’s Big Air Qualifications
Alpensia Ski Jumping Centre
7:30PM – 10:30PM (EST)
(KST February 19, 9:30AM -12:30PM)

February 20
Men’s Big Air Qualifications
Alpensia Ski Jumping Centre
7:30PM – 10:45PM (EST)
(KST February 21, 9:30AM -12:45AM)

February 22
Women’s Big Air Finals
Alpensia Ski Jumping Centre
7:30PM – 9:00PM (EST)
(KST February 23, 9:30AM -11:00AM)

February 23
Men’s Big Air Finals
Alpensia Ski Jumping Centre
8:00PM – 9:30PM (EST)
(KST February 24, 10:00AM -11:30AM)

Best Ways To Watch Olympic Big Air

With over 1800 hours of total coverage, the most in Olympic history, you’ll have plenty of opportunities to catch your favorite sports. The main events will be aired on NBC, but NBC will also be covering events on their NBC Universal cable networks, which include NBCSN, CNBC, and the USA Network. Every Olympic event will be available to stream live and on-demand on NBCOlympics.com

Top Big Air Snowboarders To Watch

As mentioned earlier, while Big Air is a new to the Olympics event, it is a long-standing snowboarding discipline across other competitions around the world. Below are some of the established athletes as well as up-and-comers in the Big Air competition at the 2018 Winter games:

Mens:

USA

Chris Corning

Red Gerard

Ryan Stassel

 

Japan

Yuki Kadono

 

Norway

Marcus Kleveland

Staale Sandbech

 

Canada

Mark McMorris

Tyler Nicholson

Max Parrot

Sebastien Toutant

 

Sweden

Sven Thorgren

 

Womens:

USA

Jamie Anderson

Hailey Langland

Julia Marino

 

Austria

Anna Gasser

Norway

Silje Norendal

 

Canada

Spencer O’Brien

Great Britain

Katie Ormerod

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