 Poster: A snowHead
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The IOC have once again handed full control of Olympic snowboard qualification to the FIS - 2 months before the fact finding committee was due to report on the best course of action...
Upshot seems to be that the best riders may not get to qualify for the 2014 games unless they compete in the FIS sanctioned and approved events, rather than the better known and respected (in boarding circles) TTR, X Games or Dew tours. Any athletes with their eye on the Olympics for half-pipe or slope-style is going to have a serious scheduling problem in 2013 to get their ranking.
IMHO if the olympics is to be held as the pinnacle of the sports which is hosts, surely the IOC has to recognise that there is a competitive world outside the FIS.
Articles here...
http://whitelines.mpora.com/news/fis-awarded-full-control-olympic-snowboard-qualification.html
http://whitelines.mpora.com/features/debate/letter-terje-snowboarding-olympics.html
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Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
Obviously A snowHead isn't a real person
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I can see how halfpipe can be moulded into an Olympic sport however slopestyle will be interesting to see. What will the course be like? What will get bias of technical/clean/style (can you judge style?)? As for qualifing events it's a farce! There must be backhanders going about otherwise why eliminate some of the worlds best riders? I would love Shaun White to shove 2 fingers up at the FIS but he is such a money grabbing, commercal Icon (and great pipe rider and comes across pretty cool in the interviews I've seen...he is ugly though!) he'd never do that.
Anyway, a lot of people might watch the boarding but very few regard it a battle of the worlds best. Until things change it never will...unfortunately! 
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Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
Well, the person's real but it's just a made up name, see?
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The scoring was one of the areas that the fact-finding committee was supposed to report and recommend on, though thats all up to FIS now, who'll probably go with their freestyle skiing model. Slopestyle events are judged differently depending on who's running it, this was the criteria for the 6star Oakley Arctic...
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| Each of the 5 obstacles has been assigned one judge who will solely judge that obstacle. In addition two judges are allocated to give a score for the general flow. The scores are displayed directly after each run on the big screen with the total score. The spectators can easily follow and know exactly what tricks scored higher. Each section will count for 15% of the total, and the flow counts for 25%. |
Although most events give some objects a different weighting e.g. the tricks off the big kicker earn more points than the straight rail.
IOC and FIS are hand-in-hand and have been for years, competitive boarding under the FIS banner will get second billing while there is only one 'S' in FIS. Then again IOC can't get their house in order over the womens ski-jump 
As for White? Can't see him taking a stance like Terje did, even if he wanted to, too many sponsors to keep happy.
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You need to Login to know who's really who.
You need to Login to know who's really who.
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| Richard_Sideways wrote: |
| As for White? Can't see him taking a stance like Terje did, even if he wanted to, too many sponsors to keep happy. |
Indeed - you have to go the the US to appreciate that White is the only real household name in any snowsport and promo-guy for some big corps like Target, HP etc, even off season.
Pipe and boardercross has worked ok in Olympics to date, no reason slopestyle shouldn't. I can see a rationale behind FIS qualifying criteria to ensure truly international competition, lots of existing high profile events are skewed toward N American participants e.g. X Games, Vans Triple Crown, Dew Tour , if snowboarding truly doesn't like it then they the athletes can stay home.
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Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
Anyway, snowHeads is much more fun if you do.
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fatbob, it's IOC's ball and if they want to take it home they can... but, and it's a biggie... Why commission a review and decide on a course of action BEFORE it reports?
Many of the Big name compos are invitationals, but there are still plenty of non-FIS open competitions which are well respected, all over the world too, and attract international entries, and there is a willingness out there to cooperate to get this right, certainally amongst TTR events. A point scoring international ranking system could've easily been incorporated into any number of respected open events and opened an excellent field of participants, instead we're limited to the 3 FIS sanctioned events.
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