Olympic Snowboarding

Although snowboarding hasn’t been in the Olympics for very long, it is still a very important sport. When the first snowboard was made in 1917, nobody thought that it would become such a popular sport. In fact up until the early 1990s most ski resorts banned boarders for fear of injuries. The Olympics had snowboard as a demonstration sport in the 1994 games, before it became a full sport in 1998. With multiple events and thousands of fans, all eyes will be on the boarders this Olympic games.

The most well-known and also most-watched snowboard event is the half-pipe. It made its debut in the 1998 games. Riders begin by descending from a 22 foot wall, and doing a trick once they get to the other side, eventually ending up doing between six and eight tricks. They are then scored by five judges each awarding the rider with up to ten possible points. It is so hard for a boarder to get a perfect score of 50, that it has never happened in the history of the Olympic games. Boarders are able to do two runs during the qualifying rounds with only the better of the two scores counting. Next, the 12 finalists do two more runs with only the better counting. After these are completed, the boarder with the top score earns the gold. The equipment used in half-pipe competitions is unlike that used for other snowboard events. Riders wear soft flexible boots with short wide flexible boards, almost the opposite of those used in slalom. The United States typically does quite well in these competitions amassing 14 medals from both men’s and women's half-pipe.

When talking about the half-pipe events there is one name usually comes to Americans’ minds, Shaun White. White was born on September 3, 1968, in San Diego, California. However he had to have...

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...998 all the way up until now snowboard has delighted many of its fans. The addition of the snowboard events to the Olympics has not only delighted its fans, but has also added a great variety to the types of events the games include.

Works Cited

"Shaun White." Newsmakers. Vol. 2. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Gale Power Search. Web. 29 Jan. 2014.

"Snowboard." Olympics. Olympics, n.d. Web. 29 Jan. 2014. .

"Shaun White Biography." Bio.com. A&E Networks Television, n.d. Web. 29 Jan. 2014. .

"Shaun White." Newsmakers. Vol. 2. Detroit: Gale, 2010. Gale Power Search. Web. 30 Jan. 2014.

"Shaun White." Shaun White. N.p., n.d. Web. 30 Jan. 2014.

Guastaitis, Joseph. Winter Olympic Sports Snowboarding. N.p.: n.p., n.d. Follet Shelf Reader. Crabtree Publishing Company. Web. 30 Jan. 2014