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Knee’d To Know Basis | Making Sense Of The Controversial Men’s Slopestyle Finals

The snowboard world has spoken, and they're pissed. We take a look at what exactly happened in the Olympic slopestyle finals

UPDATE: Click here to read our exclusive interview with Olympic Head Snowboard Judge, Iztok Sumatik, who spoke to us about how events unfolded inside the judge’s box

The Olympics was already shrouded in controversy long before the first rider dropped in. And in the grand scheme of things, a double knee grab shouldn’t divert focus from the wider discussions about human rights, the damaging effect the Games has on the climate, and the hyper-corporate, money-driven machine that powers the whole event. 

But two shockwaves rippled around the snowboard community over the last 48 hours. The first, came from the 25 G-force impact of Zoi Sadowski-Synnott landing an impossibly massive 1080 on the final jump to secure her first ever Olympic gold in the women’s slopestyle. The second (with less cause for celebration) was the controversial decision to award Canada’s Max Parrot the gold medal after the replay of his run revealed a double-knee grab on the off-axis “twisted sister” kicker halfway down the course.

“Two shockwaves rippled around the snowboard community over the last 48 hours”

The phrase not knowing your arse from your elbow comes to mind as the judges have come under fire for seemingly not knowing their Indy from their right knee. Everyone on the internet is seething. Sick as a parrot, you might say. But like every angry internet debate that gets distilled down to a handful of memes, emojis and incoherent ramblings, there’s a little more nuance behind the controversy.

So what are the key takeaways from the slopestyle finals? Is competitive snowboarding dead? Has style been pushed so far into the sidelines of the judging criteria that it has become obsolete? Is Shaun White frantically practising his Tindy grab now that boot grabs will be strictly off-limits in the halfpipe finals? Here’s our thoughts on what went down:

Max Parrot didn’t deserve Gold, but he deserves far more than a medal

Say what you will about Parrot, the man’s a winning machine. What he lacks in style, he makes up for with a trophy cabinet that wouldn’t look out of place in Hatton Garden. More importantly, though, his story makes for a Hollywood worthy three-part narrative. 

 

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After becoming one of the most decorated snowboarding athletes of all time, in December 2018 Parrot was diagnosed with Hodgkin’s Lymphoma (a type of blood cancer) and began a six month course of chemotherapy. By July 2019, he announced his recovery and went on to take Gold in X-Games Big Air on his first return to competitive snowboarding two months later. A genuinely inspirational story that highlighted the Canadian’s drive and determination to beat his diagnosis and return to the competitive stage.

“Two things are fact: Max still put down one of the strongest and most technical runs of the day and what he has achieved transcends snowboarding, the Olympics and whatever silverware is placed around his neck”

Was his run worthy of a 90.96 (and ultimately the gold medal)? Hmm, probably not, and the internet has already spoken. But two things are fact: Max still put down one of the strongest and most technical runs of the day and what he has achieved transcends snowboarding, the Olympics and whatever silverware is placed around his neck. Any vitriol and negativity surrounding the outcome is best aimed well away from Parrot, and the snowboard community largely seem on message with this.

The course was set up for style; the riders and judges opted for technicality

Yes, it’s true that these days the cost of entry to any top tier men’s slopestyle event is to have 14s, 16s and even 18s on lock, which is simply a byproduct of the technical direction competitive snowboarding has taken over the last 10 years. But take the previous two men’s winners from Sochi and Pyeongchang. Here’s Sage Kotsenburg’s medal winning run:

Hand drags on the rail, double grabs on the kickers, but also a couple of dabs with the mitts on the landings. Fundamentally the judges recognised Kotsenburg’s style and variation in the line and, despite the minor errors, he claimed the top spot.

Four years later and Red Gerard took one of the more creative lines on the course, with a unique interpretation of the features and the kind of line that made even the most hardened contest-cynics go “fuck, that looked pretty fun actually”. 

In those short four years since Pyong Chang, competitive slopestyle snowboarding has continued to progress deeper into the technical sphere with rotations incrementally increasing from one contest season to the next and commentators holding back on calling the tricks until the slo-mo replays give them time to count their fingers and do their sums. 

The track record of the two previous winning runs would suggest style was taken seriously in the Olympics, and (am I really about to say this?) maybe even provided an antidote to the spin-it-to-win-it mentality we’d seen in other contest formats. 

The course this year was also set up for style and creativity – perhaps even more so than the previous two Olympics. So what happened? This is where the melting pot becomes a little soupy. Judges appeared to reward technicality and precision far more than style. But crucially, most riders also seemed to opt for this tactic. 

“The track record of the two previous winning runs would suggest style was taken seriously in the Olympics”

Chickens and eggs at the ready – judges were rewarding super technical and clean runs, but the vast majority of riders were also taking a go-big-or-go-home mentality to their runs. One scrubbed landing or one revert on a spin effectively null and void your run, so riders had to choose a go-for-broke approach of surviving the rail section and risking all on the kickers with the biggest possible cumulative number of rotations to tally up at the end. 

When it’s a battle of 1440s+, there’s so little margin for error that loads of scratched runs are the inevitable result. Would it be completely ridiculous to introduce a cap on rotations? It’s happened before on a smaller stage, could it work on the ultimate sporting venue?

Which brings me to the next point…

Where does style fit into competitive snowboarding?

Ask any rider whose riding style they look up to and the field will narrow down to a handful of names – Longo, Backstrom, Perkins, Christy to name a few.

But just how exactly can you quantify style in a judging criteria? Where in the judges’ hierarchy of needs does it belong? This isn’t unique to the Olympics. Hell, it isn’t even unique to FIS. The snowboard community donned our team colours and set up our WhatsApp groups as we tuned in for the Natural Selection broadcast a couple weeks ago and debated everything from the “sporty” snow conditions to what the fuck an NFT is. 

“Style and technicality go together about as well as a dodgy curry and a pair of white linen slacks – things are going to get messy real fast, and it’s there for everyone to see”

Most of all, we all weighed in on the “style” debate. Surely Kevin Backstrom’s floaty back three shifty was enough to send the event host, Travis Rice, for an early bath; Arthur Longo’s 100ft straight air transfer was the trick of the day, he was robbed of a spot in the finals; how does Sebbe de Buck have so much style even though he’s 7’ 8” tall?

And therein lies the crux of the problem: Style and technicality go together about as well as a dodgy curry and a pair of white linen slacks – things are going to get messy real fast, and it’s there for everyone to see.

Style either needs to be placed front and centre of the criteria – allowing for small errors and a compromise in the overall technicality or big rotations – or it needs to be parked to one side and left to the movie parts, rider edits and contest formats like X Games Real Snow and Peace Park. Are we heading towards a rather depressing rebranding of ‘Slopestyle’ to ‘Slopetech’?

The all-or-nothing approach to stomping 1620s and 1800s leaves next to no opportunity for a shifty, tweak or more creative grab, and the heavy down-scoring for the lightest dab of the hands means riders have to put everything on the line in order to either stick a near perfect medal contending run or finish with a sub-50 point score. 

“Are we heading towards a rather depressing rebranding of ‘Slopestyle’ to ‘Slopetech’?”

The rail section in slopestyle still feels like an afterthought most of the time, as riders try to get through the top section safely before “Big Air 2.0” starts in the second. Performing a 1080 is already far beyond the wildest expectations of 99% of snowboarders out there, but a shifty sure as shit isn’t. And let’s face it, whether you’re a core snowboarder or someone catching a glimpse of the sport for the first time last weekend – wouldn’t that kind of riding make for a far greater spectacle for everyone?

It was telling that some of the most stoke-filled reactions coming from Ed Leigh and Tim Warwood’s BBC commentary box were for Stale’s method after his botched finals run, or Japan’s Kaito Hamada using every inch of the manicured top section of the course, even managing to lose the cameraman at one point as he banked a turn in the bowl section. Speaking of which…

Slopestyle events need to be filmed by people who understand slopestyle

Amidst the furore on social media, french freerider Mat Crepel (who is currently out in Beijing watching the action go down) has offered one of the most insightful and constructive criticisms of the Olympic slopestyle contest format: the way in which it was filmed. This was also picked up on from Leigh and Warwood as the drone footage more often closely resembled the final shot of a Western movie, with a rider disappearing off into the horizon. 

In Crepel’s post he takes some of the heat off the judges and suggests that: “For me the real fault here goes out to the IOC. When will they understand that they need to hire real snowboarding productions to do the job, filmers that know what’s up, know where to put the cameras, how to frame the riders…”

Screenshot from Mat Crepel’s Instagram story

Perhaps a more healthy debate than “Fuck FIS” and “Fuck the IOC” which is a story as old as Terje and/or time, would be to move the discussion towards how to make snowboarding more autonomous within such a fiercely regulated sub-section of the sport. Rather than toys getting chucked out the pram, let’s get camera and drone ops who actually know how to use the toys. 

It’s almost a given that the judges did not see the double knee grab until after the score was given (and who can blame them for missing it in real-time? Judging a snowboard contest these days requires levels of slo-mo only previously seen in The Matrix). Bad footage ultimately led to the wrong decision, something that any football fan will be all too familiar with from controversial VAR (Video Assistant Referee) decisions.

In the case of football, it has almost become part-and-parcel of the fickle nature in which games are won and lost. But given the confines of a slopestyle course, and the abundance of angles you can set up for each and every feature, is it really a viable excuse for missing crucial, medal defining moments in slopestyle? Not really…

The women’s slopestyle was everything that’s still great about competitive snowboarding

Finally, some good news. Amidst the controversy of the men’s event, viewers should take solace in just how incredible the women’s contest was, not just as a spectacle but as a fitting display about what makes snowboarding so special. 

 

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The outpourings of support for Zoi from every other athlete in the finals epitomised exactly why snowboarding is so fucking rad. Win or lose, medal or not, it’s about community, passion, and celebrating progression in whatever form it takes. Whatever gripes are made about the IOC, FIS and whether or not a Knindy grab (yeah, we’re calling it that now) is the highest form of freestyle sacrilege, the snowboarding community still has a lot to celebrate. Which leads us on to the next point…

Love it or hate it, the Olympics is still the biggest stage for snowboarding

Snowboarding wears more than one hat. For anyone who has read this far down, it’s likely that it isn’t just a once-in-every-four-years spectacle that temporarily steals your attention, but a culture that is ingrained into your way of life, your group of friends and your dwindling disposable income. It’s natural that we feel a sense of protectiveness and pride in seeing our not so mini subculture out there on the global stage, watched by millions and written about in the media by people who use the words “stunts” and “spin-flips”.

But what about the other x-million viewers, for whom the Olympics is their gateway to our community? As a UK based rider, I know all too well the impact Jenny Jones’s Olympic bronze medal had on the country. I also work in the mountains as a snowboard coach and teacher and, even now, first timers will make the journey out to the alps to try out sliding sideways and almost invariably their first point of reference to the sport will be Jenny’s medal winning run. 

“It’s a mainstream platform and the core aren’t necessarily the primary audience, but when we get that platform we all want to see the best advert we can for the sport, one that we feel reflects it”

But look, I get it. Something needs to change. It’s a mainstream platform and the core aren’t necessarily the primary audience, but when we get that platform we all want to see the best advert we can for the sport, one that we feel reflects it. And that’s where we’ve come unstuck with the men’s slopestyle this year.

It’s not a perfect format, there is much room for improvement, and it is only one slice of the pie. But it’s a big slice. Slopestyle, big air and halfpipe will have some of the largest viewing figures of this year’s Olympics. In order for our sport to thrive — maybe even survive – it needs global mainstream events like the Olympics to boost its exposure and participation. And surely that’s something we can all get behind?

Oh, one last thing…

Boot grabs may be punishable by death in the Halfpipe finals

Shaun, if you’re reading this, please, God, don’t grab your boots in the pipe finals. You’ll be the proverbial ginger straw that could break the snowboard community’s back. It’s your last one. Go for glory. After all, there’s a lot of real estate in between your bindings to lay out a big ol’ method.

Check out the full Olympic snowboard schedule ahead of the Halfpipe, Big Air and Snowboard Cross events. Stay tuned for all the results and recap on Whitelines.com

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