Snowboard is one of the newer events on the Winter Olympic programme, having been first included at the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan. But despite having only featured at six editions of the Games, snowboard has become one of the most popular and exciting sports at the Winter Olympics.

There are 11 events in the snowboard competition at Beijing 2022, including mixed team snowboard cross, which will be making its Winter Olympic debut after featuring at the Winter Youth Olympic Games.

The snowboard competition will take place at Genting Snow Park in the Zhangjiakou cluster, where competitions in freestyle skiing, cross-country skiing, Nordic combined, ski jumping and biathlon will also take place. Following the Winter Olympics, the venue will be converted into a ski resort.

The Big Air event will take place at Big Air Shougang, located in the Shougang Industrial Park. The venue is the world's first permanent Big Air structure, and will be used by the public for recreational purposes after the Games.

OLYMPIC COMPETITION

The snowboard competition at Beijing 2022 will feature 11 events, including the new mixed team snowboard cross event.

Men & Women

• Parallel Giant Slalom
• Snowboard Cross
• Halfpipe
• Slopestyle
• Big Air
• Mixed Team Snowboard Cross

The Halfpipe, Slopestyle and Big Air competitions are all judged events, meaning each athlete's run(s) are scored by a panel of judges who evaluate riders based on the difficulty of the tricks, execution of the run, amplitude of the techniques and landing of the jumps. The snowboard cross, parallel giant slalom and mixed team snowboard cross events are all races (first to cross the line wins!).

SNOWBOARD HISTORY

Snowboarding has its origins as a sport in 1960's America, when people sought new winter activities.

In the late 1970s snowboarders started to “invade” traditional ski resorts, but faced opposition from skiers who tried to exclude the snowboarders from “their” mountains. By the 1990s, however, almost all ski resorts had accepted snowboarding, and the resorts have found the snowboarders to be an excellent source of new revenue.

The International Snowboarding Federation (ISF) formed in 1989 and the International Ski Federation (FIS) introduced snowboarding as a FIS discipline in 1994, helping pave the way for snowboarding's Winter Olympic debut at the Nagano Games in 1998.

Men's and women's events were contested in the giant slalom and halfpipe competitions, and at the 2002 Games in Salt Lake City, parallel giant slalom and halfpipe were added to the programme. Snowboard cross made its debut at Turin 2006, with slopestyle and parallel slalom added in 2014. Big Air made its debut at PyeongChang 2018, and mixed team snowboard cross will be the latest event to joining the Olympic snowboard programme when it debuts at Beijing 2022.

NZ MEDALS

Zoi Sadowski-Synnott has been New Zealand's only medal (bronze) in Snowboarding at the PyeongChang 2018 Olympic Winter Games in for the Big Air event.