Slopestyle is a
winter sport
Winter sports or winter activities are competitive sports or non-competitive recreational activities which are played on snow or ice. Most are variations of skiing, ice skating and sledding. Traditionally, such games were only played in cold are ...
in which athletes
ski
A ski is a narrow strip of semi-rigid material worn underfoot to glide over snow. Substantially longer than wide and characteristically employed in pairs, skis are attached to ski boots with ski bindings, with either a free, lockable, or partia ...
or
snowboard down a course including a variety of obstacles including rails, jumps and other
terrain park features. Points are scored for amplitude, originality and quality of tricks. The discipline has its roots in action sports like
skateboarding and
BMX and has very successfully crossed over into the snow sports worlds of skiing and snowboarding.
Skiers use
Twin-tip skis for their symmetry since they often go large portions of the course backward (referred to as "switch") and for their balanced weight so as to not destabilize spins. Slopestyle tricks fall mainly into four categories: spins,
grinds, grabs and
flips, and most tricks done in competition are a combination of these.
Slopestyle is one of the
freestyle disciplines, along with
moguls,
aerials,
cross
A cross is a geometrical figure consisting of two intersecting lines or bars, usually perpendicular to each other. The lines usually run vertically and horizontally. A cross of oblique lines, in the shape of the Latin letter X, is termed a sa ...
,
big air
Big air is a high-injury-risk sports discipline where the competitor rides a vehicle, such as a motocross motorcycle, a skateboard, a snowboard, or a pair of skis, down a hill or ramp and performs aerial tricks after launching off very large jumps ...
and
half-pipe.
History of Slopestyle
Competitive slopestyle started in 1997.
Slopestyle became an
Olympic event, in both skiing and snowboarding forms, at the
2014 Winter Games in
Sochi, Russia
Sochi ( rus, Со́чи, p=ˈsotɕɪ, a=Ru-Сочи.ogg) is the largest resort city in Russia. The city is situated on the Sochi River, along the Black Sea in Southern Russia, with a population of 466,078 residents, up to 600,000 residents i ...
. The first Olympic champions in Slopestyle Skiing were American
Joss Christensen for the men and Canadian
Dara Howell
Dara Howell (born August 23, 1994) is a Canadian freestyle skier. She was the first freestyle skier to win a gold medal in ski slopestyle at the inaugural event at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi. Howell has also won a bronze medal in women's s ...
for the women. The first Olympic champions for Snowboarding Slopestyle were both Americans,
Sage Kotsenburg for the men and
Jamie Anderson for the women.
Competition
In competition, athletes compete for points awarded by judges on a structured basis. The scoring criteria vary from one organization to another and from each event to the next, but in general athletes are judged on these criteria:
[
* Amplitude: Height of jumps, also called air. Bigger tricks score higher.
* Difficulty: ]Degree of difficulty
Degree of difficulty (DD, sometimes called tariff or grade) is a concept used in several sports and other competitions to indicate the technical difficulty of a skill, performance, or course, often as a factor in scoring. Sports which incorporate ...
of the tricks.
* Execution: How well the athletes perform their tricks. For example, tight rotation, clean grabs, and smooth landing.
* Variety: The difference of the tricks within the run. Doing the same trick off all the jumps will not score highly even if it is a very difficult trick.
* Progression: How the trick selection progresses the sport, for example brand new tricks will score high because they push the sport forward.
* Combinations or flow: The way the athletes string the tricks together. Having to slow down or otherwise reset after a trick will lose points.
* Overall: The whole package, including the athlete's personal style.
A feature that is somewhat unique to slopestyle and similar events is that even though it is a judged sport, scores cannot be compared between events: "A run that scores 65 at one event may score 75 at another event. The score is just a tool to organize the rankings and may vary based on the range and anchor score set for the day."2018 US Ski and Snowboard Freestyle Competition Guide
/ref>
Competitive results
Olympics
References
{{Skiing
Types of skiing
Snow sports
Freestyle skiing
Snowboarding