Beijing 2022: Snowboard slopestyle and big air preview
Feb 04, 2022·Snowboard Park & Pipe
BEIJING 2022 OLYMPIC WINTER GAMES SLOPESTYLE & BIG AIR PREVIEW
The Beijing 2022 Olympic Winter Games are set to start this week, with the Opening Ceremony taking to Beijing’s National Stadium - aka “The Bird’s Nest) - on Friday, February 4th, with the first snowboard action coming in the form of women’s slopestyle qualifications the very next day.
You can find the full Beijing 2022 Snowboard programme HERE. Below we’ll take a look at what to expect from the Beijing 2022 Park & Pipe competitions at what will be a unique - and no-doubt exciting - Olympic Winter Games in China.
THE VENUES
The slopestyle course in Genting Snow Park was revealed last week and it is, truly, a work of art, and doubtless one of the absolute best courses ever constructed. You can read our in-depth, top-to-bottom look at the venue HERE.
As for big air, we’re already familiar with the stunning set-up in at the Shougang Industrial Park in Beijing city’s Shijingshan district, where the world’s first and only permanent big air structure sits amongst the monolithic cooling towers that stand testament to the area’s steel-smelting past.
Standing 60m high and some 160m long, with an adjustable tabletop distance of 20-27m (likely to be closer to 22m for Olympic competition), the Shougang jump is inarguably the best man-made big air venue ever seen, and the level of riding seen on it two years ago at the Air + Style World Cup competition that christened the jump was simply incredible.
It seems almost a given that never-been-done tricks will go down and history will be made during Beijing 2022 big air and slopestyle events, and while all Olympic competition is must-watch TV, the Beijing 2022 freeski competitions are shaping up to be extra-must-watch.
THE RIDERS - WOMEN
PyeongChang 2018 women’s slopestyle podium
GOLD - Jamie Anderson (USA)
SILVER - Laurie Blouin (CAN)
BRONZE - Enni Rukijarvi (FIN)
PyeongChang 2018 women’s big air podium
GOLD - Anna Gasser (AUT)
SILVER - Jamie Anderson (USA)
BRONZE - Zoi Sadwoski-Synnott (NZL)
The women’s Olympic slopestyle competition last go-around in Korea unfortunately saw some heavy winds which resulted in a great majority of the riders struggling to put down clean runs up to the standards of progression that had been established in the lead-up to the event.
Having said that, even without the winds it’s entirely possible that we could have seen the exact same medal outcome, as all three of Jamie Anderson, Laurie Blouin and Enni Rukijarvi came into PyeongChang as strong podium hopefuls in any conditions.
Those three, along with the likes of Anna Gasser (AUT), Julia Marino (USA) and Miyabi Onitsuka (JPN) represent the veteran force who were at the top of the game four years ago and remain amongst the world’s best now in 2022 - with the two-time slopestyle gold medallist and big air silver medallist Anderson and the reigning big air gold medallist Gasser especially considered to be amongst the top podium bets in Beijing.
However, snowboarding is all about moving forward, and there’s a fresh crop of riders who have made their way into the snowboarding elite in the last couple of years, with Zoe Sadwoski-Synnott (NZL) leading the way.
Sadowski-Synnott showed a flash of what she was capable of back in PyeongChang when she claimed big air bronze at just 17 years of age.
However, it’s in the last two seasons that the now 21-year-old has truly taken things to the next level, and she comes into Beijing 2022 as the reigning slopestyle World Champion and as a double gold medallist from the most recent iteration of the X Games, when she took top spot in big air and made history in slopestyle by becoming the first woman to land back-to-back double corks in a slopestyle run.
Throw in a Dew Tour win from back in December, and on the women’s side of things it’s looking like it’s Zoi Sadowski-Synnott’s world and everybody else is just living in it right now.
Another to watch from south of the equator is Australia’s Tess Coady, who took top spot in the Laax Open two weeks ago to launch herself into the Beijing podium conversation. The 21-year-old Coady, along with the teenage Japanese tandem of Reira Iwabuchi and Kokomo Murase, and up-and-comers like Annika Morgan (GER), Melissa Pepperkamp (NED) and Evy Poppe (BEL) should be right there alongside Sadowski-Synnott to push the old guard to the limits in Beijing.
THE RIDERS - MEN
PyeongChang 2018 men’s slopestyle podium
GOLD - Red Gerard (USA)
SILVER - Max Parrot (CAN)
BRONZE - Mark McMorris (CAN)
PyeongChang 2018 men’s big air podium
GOLD - Sebastien Toutant (CAN)
SILVER - Kyle Mack (USA)
BRONZE - Billy Morgan (GBR)
Where to start with the men…
First off, we can tell you that in all the slopestyle and big air World Cup competitions in the past decade, only two men have been able to claim back-to-back wins - Canada’s Max Parrot, who took two big air wins in a row back in the 2015/16 season, and Marcus Kleveland of Norway, who took slopestyle wins in Aspen (USA) and Silvaplana (SUI) last winter to close out his double crystal globe-winning season in style.
Actually, if you factor in the X Games big air competition and the Aspen 2021 World Championships slopestyle competition, Kleveland in fact took four major victories consecutively last season, making his 2020/21 campaign one of the most dominant we’ve ever seen on a men’s side of competition where the skill sets of the top 15-20 riders is so uniformly elite.
Kleveland has kept that momentum rolling right into 2021/22, taking silver in the X Games slopestyle competition before repeating as big air winner the very next day. While there’s typically no such thing as a ‘sure thing’ in men’s slope and big air, Kleveland in the past two season has kind of thrown that on its head, becoming the most dominant competition rider in the world just ahead of the biggest events of his career coming up in Beijing.
(The fact that the 22-year-old has done all of this only a couple of years removed from literally exploding his patella makes it all the more extraordinary.)
Kleveland has certainly had an 18 months to remember, and when you look at the game of musical chairs that has gone on around him on the podium his continued success becomes even more striking.
In last season’s three slopestyle and one big air competitions, we saw the likes of Max Parrot (CAN), Sven Thorgren (SWE), Leon Vockensperger (GER), Red Gerard (USA), Mark McMorris (CAN), Chris Corning (USA) and Mons Roisland (NOR) all hit a World Cup podium, though not one of those Beijing 2022 podium threats was able to do so more than once.
While Kleveland has yet to enter a World Cup competition in 2021/22, it has been more of the same in this season’s five big air and slopestyle competitions, with Roisland the only rider able to land on two podiums.
While we’ve seen vets like reigning big air Olympic gold medallist Sebastien Toutant (CAN) and Sochi 2014 slopestyle silver medallist Staale Sandbach (NOR) land back on the podium in World Cup action this season, we’ve seen five men grab the first World Cup podiums of their career, with two of those riders doing so in the form of a victory - 17-year-old Su Yiming (CHN) in the Steamboat (USA) big air, and Sean Fitzsimons at the Laax Open (SUI) slopestyle.
Then there’s dark horse Rene Rinnekangas of Finland, who hasn’t landed on a podium yet in 2021/22, but did grab slopestyle bronze at the Aspen 2021 World Championships last season. Rubbekangas has just the kind of no-holds-barred, shred-anything riding style that might be the most perfectly suited to the vast, multifaceted course here at Beijing 2022, and a lot of people are eagerly anticipating his runs.
All of which is a long, roundabout way of saying it really does look like anybody’s game come time to drop in for men’s action in both slopestyle and big air here in Beijing.
But then again, when you take a look at the performances from reigning slopestyle gold medallist Red Gerard in his Dew Tour slopestyle win in December, or from Mark McMorris in his X Games win just a few days ago, and you think to yourself, maybe the big dogs won’t be so easily chased away as some might think…
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