Olympic Snowboarding Odds for Milan 2026

What Are The Rules For Olympic Snowboarding?

Parallel Giant Slalom

This event sends two athletes down a hill at the same time as they slalom parallel to each other. The elevation difference is anywhere between 120-200 meters, the length between 400-700 meters, and a minimum of 18 gates. The distance between each participant’s courses must be between 20 and 27 meters. The degree of the slopes must be 16 degrees and the width must be at least 40 meters.

Half Pipe

This competition sees six judges decide the overall score by taking into account the height, rotations, techniques and degree of difficulty of a particular routine of tricks performed by riders traveling down a gradually sloped U-shaped course. The score scale goes from 0 to 100 points, and the rankings are decided by the highest score the participants receive after two runs. The half pipe has a slope of about 17.5 degrees, has a recommended length of 170 meters, a height of 6.7 meters, and the width of the semi-circle should be between 19-22 meters.

Snowboard Cross

This is a grouped snowboarding event in which four to six athletes race down the designed course where there will be obstacles like jumps, spine transfers, rollers and banks. Whoever finishes the course first wins the race. The length of the race is 1,050 meters at a 12-degree downward slope. The slope’s width is 40 meters, and the track is 6-16 meters wide. Snowboard cross races can feature fields of up to 36 athletes vying to qualify for the finals after their times from the preliminaries are added up. After that the top two (and sometimes three) athletes from one team will continue on to the next round.

Slope Style

Another race in which the competitors have obstacles, slope style is separated this discipline from snowboard cross is that the competing athletes can actually pick the objects they want to perform with. Available choices are obstacles such as rails, tables, boxes, walls and jump pads. A group of six judges base their overall scores off of height, rotations, techniques and degree of difficulty. Slopestyle has a minimum elevation of 150 meters, a slope slant of 12 degrees or more, a minimum width of 30 meters, a minimum of six obstacles (jumps and the various objects listed above), and three or more jumping pads.