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Snowboarding
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Snowboarding...
A fairly new Olympic event since 1998 at the Nagano Games, snowboarding is a sport popular with the younger generation that involves riding down a snow-covered slope on a snowboard that is attached to the rider’s feet. Slopestyle is being added to the 2012 Winter Youth Olympic Games (YOG).
Three types of popular competitive snowboarding are:
- Freestyle
- Halfpipe
- Slopestyle
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< Freestyle Snowboarding:
Freestyle involves the rider using man-made terrain features, such as rails, boxes (objects with slick tops, usually made with HDPE) and innumerable other innovative features to perform tricks on. Equipment involved is usually a soft boot with a twin tipped for better balance while riding regular or switch (performing backwards).
What the judges look for: Tricks performed during the race. The more tricks performed and the more complicated they are, the higher the rider’s final score is. The rider with the highest score at the end wins.
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< Halfpipe Snowboarding:
This kind of snowboarding is performed on a halfpipe, a semi-circular ditch or a ramp built on a downward slope between 8 and 23 feet deep. In halfpipe competitions, snowboarders descend an inclined snow trough one at a time, performing a sequence of tricks including acrobatic jumps and flips as they pass from one side to the other. The amount of speed picked up on the run-in determines the height of the jumps.
What the judges look for: Height, style and technical difficulty of the maneuvers. |
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< Slopestyle Snowboarding:
The young riders select their own line depending on their technical ability and creativity and descend and perform tricks on a freestyle course, moving around, over, across, up or down terrain features and obstacles such as kickers, rails, hits and tables.
What the judges look for: Technical difficulty and factors including style and the height of the jumps performed. However, it isn't always the rider who lands the hardest tricks who wins; it may be the one who lands easier tricks but makes them look good. |
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More... if you'd like to see more freestyle action, check out the Freestyle Skiing event and the extreme snowboarding video below.
CHART BELOW: We added these winter "one-pagers" to our Sports Know-How category in time for the Winter Youth Olympic Games (YOG) that were held in January 2012. We got inspired by the 2012 London Summer Games to add to our Summer Sports category. We'll be adding sports periodically so keep checking back. If the titles are shining brightly in white text, they're ready for you to click on! ^.^
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