First judges clinic of 2023/24 season takes place in Innsbruck

This weekend, Innsbruck played host to 33 snowboard judges from 15 different nations, who came together for the first international snowboard clinic of the 2023-24 season, with 20 more judges from around the world joining via Zoom.

The 3-day clinic, lead by Iztok Sumatic, Ola Sundeqvist and Gaz Vogan, provided education and discussions for snowboard judges in Big Air, Slopestyle and Halfpipe disciplines. To keep their license, snowboard judges must attend a clinic every 2-years, but with the rate of progression in the sport, many judges participate on an annual basis.

As well as updating the judges with information from FIS, the clinic featured a lot of practical exercises, with participants working in groups to evaluate various runs from the 2022-23 season. As part of the exercises, the judges must justify their rankings, prompting discussions and debating different opinions, according to the judging criteria.

Every Slopestyle World Cup this season will feature the section-by-section judging format, and this style of judging dominated the slopestyle segment of the clinic. The participants worked in teams to simulate competitions, to practice using this format ahead of the season. Due to the complexity of this judging system, it’s essential to educate and train judges in this format.

As well as developing their individual knowledge and skills, the clinic acted as a great tool for judging community to calibrate their thoughts and opinions, so the judges for national, continental and world cup events are on the same page.

To ensure this consistency of judging across the world, there are more international clinics taking place this fall:

• 4th-5th November – Tokyo, Japan

• 17th-19th November – Park City, USA

• 24th-26th November – Calgary, Canada

A big thank you must be said to Lukas Draxl along with the Austrian Snowboard federation for organising the clinic.