Technical guide to the halfpipe and big air events in snowboarding

Freestyle snowboarding has established itself as a mainstay of the Winter Olympics and X Games, attracting a global audience due to the acrobatic complexity and risk involved. Within this universe, the Halfpipe and Big Air events represent the pinnacle of technical performance. While Halfpipe requires consistency and rhythm in a “U-shaped” structure, Big Air focuses on the perfect execution of a single highly complex maneuver. Understanding the dynamics of these competitions requires familiarity with the physics of rotations, specific terminology and, fundamentally, the rigorous criteria used by judges to score athletes.

Origin and historical evolution

The history of competitive snowboarding is intrinsically linked to the culture of skateboarding and surfing, adapted for the snow. The development of competition structures it has evolved from natural ditches to precision-engineered constructions.

• Halfpipe: Inspired by the empty swimming pools used by skateboarders in the 1970s, the snow halfpipe began as hand-dug ditches. The Olympic debut took place in Nagano 1998. Since then, the structure has standardized on the “Superpipe” format, with walls 22 feet (approximately 6.7 meters) high, allowing vertical flights that exceed 5 meters above the edge.
• Big Air: Although big jumps have always been part of snowboarding, Big Air as a codified discipline is more recent on the Olympic scene, debuting in PyeongChang 2018. The modality evolved from “Best Trick” contests and often uses gigantic scaffolding in urban environments, in addition to traditional slopes in ski resorts.

Competition rules and operation

The two modalities have different dispute formats, although share the technical basis of the maneuvers.

Halfpipe

In Halfpipe, the athlete descends a semicircle-shaped track, moving from one wall to the other. The objective is to perform a sequence of maneuvers (generally between 5 and 6 “hits” or jumps) without losing speed.

• Format: In the finals, three runs are usually played. The best score wins (best of three).
• Dynamics: The athlete must maintain rhythm (“flow”) to ensure that the last maneuver has as much amplitude as the first. Falls or hand touches in the snow severely penalize the grade.

Big Air

Big Air consists of a single large kicker. The athlete gains speed, jumps, performs a complex maneuver in the air and must land cleanly on the inclined catch.

• Format: In Olympic finals, the common format is three jumps, where the two best scores are added together for the final total.
• Variety rule: To avoid repetition, athletes must rotate in different directions in the two jumps counted (e.g. one jump turning to the left and the other to the right). If they repeat the same maneuver, only one will count.

Judging criteria and grading system

Understanding how judges give scores is essential to understanding the result. Unlike races where the timer decides, here the evaluation is subjective, but based on strict technical criteria defined by the FIS (International Ski and Snowboard Federation). The score generally ranges from 0 to 100.

Judges evaluate based on the acronym D-E-A-V-P:

1. Difficulty: Analyzes technical complexity. It includes the number of rotations (degrees of turn), the axis of rotation (horizontal, vertical or hybrid/cork), the blind landing and the complexity of the grip on the board (grab).
2. Execution: Refers to the cleanliness of the maneuver. Judges look for soft landings, stability in the air and maintaining the grab for the correct time. Hand touches on landing (“hand drag”) or instability (“butt check”) drastically reduce the score.
3. Amplitude: Height reached in the jump. In Halfpipe, this is critical; flying low results in low scores, even with difficult maneuvers. In Big Air, distance and projected height are evaluated.
4. Variety: Fundamental in Halfpipe. The athlete cannot just rotate to the same side. It is necessary to demonstrate mastery of the four turning directions (Frontside, Backside, Cab/Switch Frontside, Switch Backside).
5. Progression: Introduction of new maneuvers or variations never seen before, rewarding innovation in the sport.

Titles and records

The evolution of the sport is marked by the “arms race” of rotations and inverted axes (corks).

• Shaun White (USA): Three-time Olympic champion in Halfpipe (2006, 2010, 2018). He was a pioneer in popularizing Double McTwist 1260 and holds the record for most golds in the X Games.
• Chloe Kim (USA): Two-time Olympic champion in Halfpipe (2018, 2022). She was the first woman to land two consecutive 1080-degree maneuvers in an Olympic competition.
• Ayumu Hirano (Japan): Won gold in Beijing 2022 by performing the first Triple Cork 1440 of Olympic history in Halfpipe, raising the technical level of the sport to a new level.
• Anna Gasser (Austria): Two-time Olympic champion in Big Air (2018, 2022) and the first woman to land a Cab Triple Cork 1260.
• Su Yiming (China): In Big Air, he landed maneuvers with 1800 degrees of rotation (5 complete spins) to win gold at home in the 2022 games.

Technical curiosities

• Mathematics of rotations: Maneuvers are named by degrees of rotation. A full circle is 360. Therefore: 720 (2 turns), 1080 (3 turns), 1440 (4 turns), 1800 (5 turns), 2160 (6 turns).
• Grab is mandatory: Touching the board in the air isn’t just about style; It’s stability. A jump without a “grab” is considered incomplete and technically poor by the judges, resulting in low scores.
• Switch Stance: One of the greatest demonstrations of skill is walking (or landing) with the “wrong” foot in front (walking backwards). Maneuvers started or ended in switch have a higher difficulty value.

Freestyle snowboarding, through Halfpipe and Big Air, represents the fusion between extreme athleticism and artistic expression. The constant updating of judging criteria seeks to balance the encouragement of increasingly dangerous rotations with the need for style and perfect execution, ensuring that the sport remains visually understandable and technically challenging.