Top Snowboarders Who Could Medal In Slopestyle, Halfpipe And Big Air At Beijing Olympics

Snowboarding at the Beijing Olympics got underway Saturday morning (Friday night in the U.S.) with the women’s slopestyle qualification, and the sport’s first medal event in the same discipline will be broadcast Saturday in primetime.

In slopestyle, the United States has been dominant, with American men and women taking gold in both 2014 and 2018, the two years the discipline has been included in the Olympic program.

For the women, Jamie Anderson took gold at both the Sochi 2014 and Pyeongchang 2018 Games; for the men, Sage Kostenburg took the first-ever slopestyle gold in 2014 and Red Gerard won in 2018.

Halfpipe is the discipline most casual viewers know best, as it’s been on the Olympic program since the Nagano 1998 Games. Shaun White has won halfpipe gold for the men three times: in 2006, 2010 and 2018.

Chloe Kim is the heavy favorite to defend her gold medal from 2018 in the women’s halfpipe event.

At the Beijing Games, slopestyle and halfpipe will see a field of 30 men and 30 women compete in qualifiers, with the top 12 making it through to the finals. Slopestyle and big air are grouped together because athletes who qualified for the Olympics in slopestyle automatically qualified in big air, if they compete. But they are separate events, and the men’s and women’s big air competitions will conclude Olympic snowboarding on Tuesday, Feb. 15 in China (broadcast at 12 a.m. ET in the U.S.)

Let’s dive deeper into the names you should know heading into the snowboarding events at the Beijing 2022 Games. The full schedule can be found here.

Slopestyle and Big Air

Red Gerard, United States

Gerard, originally from Cleveland, Ohio, but now calling Silverthorne, Colorado, home, won slopestyle gold as a 17-year-old at the 2018 Pyeongchang Games, his first Olympics. The exclamation mark on his run was his backside triple cork 1440 (four full rotations and three off-axis flips). At the Beijing Games, where he’s the odds-on favorite, he’ll have to best that trick to defend his Olympic gold medal. He finished just off the podium at X Games Aspen in January, in fourth, but took first place in December’s Dew Tour. There, in the jumps section, he went frontside 1080 nosegrab, backside 1260 melon and switch backside 1620 Weddle grab. Men’s slopestyle has taken a leap in progression by putting the 1620s front and center. “Every training camp you get a feel for what the new standard is gonna be and it’s always crazy,” Gerard told me in December. “The younger generation, especially Japan, is just pushing so hard. Something you’ll see quite often is one 16, if not back-to-back 16s.”

Zoi Sadowski-Synnott, New Zealand

The biggest threat to Jamie Anderson earning her third consecutive gold medal in slopestyle is Sadowski-Synnott, who finished first in qualifying for the Beijing women’s slopestyle final. The 20-year-old made her Olympic debut at the 2018 Games, finishing 13th in slopestyle but taking bronze in big air. Heading into the Beijing Games, Sadowski-Synnott has been atop every podium, from January’s X Games Aspen to December’s Dew Tour and the world championships at Aspen in March 2021. At X Games, the Kiwi became the first female snowboarder to land a frontside double 1080 and backside double 1080 combo in competition, which should be good enough to earn gold in Beijing if she can land it again. “I know five other girls off the top of my head that are capable of that run and it just comes down to the right day and the stars aligning to put it down,” Sadowski-Synnott told me at X Games. The New Zealander also took big air gold at X Games with a massive backside 1260, which led Anderson to attempt the trick herself for the first time in competition. Sadowski is the gold-medal favorite in slopestyle and a podium favorite in big air.

Mark McMorris, Canada

McMorris is the king of slopestyle at X Games, where he has six slopestyle gold medals, the most all-time. But he hasn’t been able to translate that success to the Olympics, where he has taken slopestyle bronze at both the 2014 Sochi and 2018 Pyeongchang Games. Of course, injuries were a mitigating factor in both McMorris’ previous Olympic appearances; less than two weeks before the Sochi Games, he broke his rib, and 10 months before the Pyeongchang Games, he had a life-threatening crash in which he suffered, among other injuries, a fractured jaw, a ruptured spleen and a collapsed lung. Now fully healthy, McMorris is coming off X Games slopestyle gold in January with a run that included a switch backside triple cork 1620 stalefish, a frontside triple cork 1440 Weddle and a backside triple cork 1620 Indy on the jumps section. Rival Marcus Kleveland actually pulled ahead of McMorris on the final runs, but McMorris simply cleaned up the run he had already done and managed to re-take the lead for good. The Canadian was the only competitor to put three triples in his run, which would be good enough to win him gold in Beijing if he can do it again. At X Games, “I learned that execution is very key and doing your tricks super clean and making them look easy, showing control is really big,” McMorris told me. “I hope I can ride like this in a couple weeks at the Games. It’s a nice momentum-builder.”

Jamie Anderson, United States

At 31 years old, Anderson has implied that this could be her final Olympic run. For years, it wasn’t very hard for the veteran to win—but that’s changing. The next generation coming up behind her, led by 20-year-old Sadowski-Synnott, is pushing the sport considerably, introducing 1260s into the mix. Anderson had never attempted the trick in competition before but did so in big air at X Games to keep pat with Sadowski-Synnott, who ended up taking gold to Anderson’s silver in both slopestyle and big air in Aspen. In order to threepeat in slopestyle at the Olympics, will the South Lake Tahoe native have to put the back-to-back double 1080s in her run, like Sadowski-Synnott did at X Games? “It’s hard to say,” Anderson told me. “It depends on the conditions and how all the jumps are built [in Beijing]. But it’s getting to that level.” In slopestyle qualification, Anderson called the course and the snow quality “challenging.” We’ll see if the women are able to attempt their hardest tricks in the final.

Marcus Kleveland, Norway

Norway’s Kleveland is one of a handful of snowboarders who could bring home medals in both slopestyle and big air; he’s the odds-on favorite in the latter and expected to be runner-up in the former. The 22-year-old is making his second Olympic appearance, having finished off the podium in both his events at the 2018 Pyeongchang Games. In big air, Kleveland has led the progression for everyone, one of few riders who can put down a clean quad 1800 and the first to land it in competition in 2017. Indeed, he took gold at X Games Aspen with his quad cork 1800 Indy and a cab 1800 Weddle in big air, and exchanged the lead with Mark McMorris in the slopestyle competition in Aspen before finishing with silver. “The level of riding was just through the roof,” Kleveland said about the men’s slopestyle final at X Games. “Mark was doing three triples in row…it was just a gnarly contest.” As for his plan at the Olympics, Kleveland isn’t overthinking it. “I’m just gonna focus on trying to get a run down,” he told me.

Tess Coady, Australia

Making her Olympic debut, Australia’s Coady qualified eighth for the women’s slopestyle final on Friday night. It’s a shot at realizing her Olympic dream; for the 2018 Pyeongchang Games, she was on the Olympic team but tore her ACL in training and was unable to compete. Coady actually hurt her ankle taking a fall in practice prior to qualifications on the course Jamie Anderson described as “gnarly,” but her ability to compete in Saturday’s final is not in jeopardy. The 21-year-old is coming off the second World Cup victory of her career with her gold medal at the Laax Open in January. She debuted a new trick there—a frontside double 1080—and if the wind and conditions cooperate, doing the same in Beijing would put her in contention for a podium spot.

Halfpipe

Chloe Kim, United States

At the 2018 Pyeongchang Games, Kim became the youngest woman to win an Olympic snowboarding gold medal when she emerged victorious at just 17 years old. But life after that proved difficult for Kim, as she grappled with her newfound fame and its interruption into her teenagehood. She took almost two years off to attend Princeton. When she returned to snowboarding, none of her rivals had been able to close the gap; she won every competition between January 2021 and January 2022. She also changed sponsors from Burton to ROXY, designing a signature outerwear collection. Kim is the clear favorite to win gold for the second time in as many Games, as the only competitor with back-to-back 1080s in her halfpipe run. As if that weren’t enough to separate her from the pack, Kim told me at December’s Dew Tour she has a few new things up her sleeve. “I have three new tricks waiting for you guys,” Kim said. “I’m trying to figure out when I want to do them, but I think the Olympics will be the time.”

Ayumu Hirano, Japan

There is one trick that could define the men’s halfpipe competition, and Ayumu Hirano’s name is the one you’ll hear most associated with it: the triple. The new frontier in halfpipe snowboarding is here; after Ayumu Hirano, Ruka Hirano and Yuto Totsuka all successfully landed the trick at training camp in Saas-Fee, Switzerland, this fall, Ayumu became the first to land it in competition at Dew Tour in December, though he fell on his next hit there—and also on his next two tries at the Laax Open and X Games. “It was crazy to see Ayumu do the triple cork,” Totsuka said at the time, adding that he would most likely include it in his Olympic run. Ayumu said of his frontside triple cork 1440 truck driver at X Games that it was “the cleanest that’s ever been done,” and he knows now he can successfully link it into the rest of his run…and that spells trouble for his competitors.

Cai Xuetong, China

China’s best hope to bring home snowboarding gold rests with Cai, who is ranked No. 1 in the world in women’s halfpipe heading into the Beijing Games. The two-time world champion is coming off a formidable season that saw her win a World Cup title at Copper Mountain in December 2021, finish second at Mammoth Mountain in January and take seventh at the Laax Open later in the month. But the former two competitions were missing a crucial element—Chloe Kim. In her winning run at the Copper Mountain World Cup in December, Cai started off with a stylish backside air before going into a frontside 900 Weddle grab into a backside 540 Weddle, an air-to-fakie melon and ending with a cab 900 melon. But without adding a 1080 into the mix at the ultra-competitive Beijing Games, she likely won’t be able to challenge Kim for gold.

Yuto Totsuka, Japan

Redemption is the narrative for Japan’s Totsuka at the Beijing Games. Viewers will remember the scary scene at the 2018 Pyeongchang Games when Totsuka fell, hit the edge of the 22-foot halfpipe and had to be evacuated by medics. In the four years since, he’s won world championships and World Cups—winning every contest he entered in the 2020-21 season—but he’s missing the elusive Olympic gold. The triple could be the game-changer for Totsuka. But it also ups the stakes and the danger considerably. Even if he doesn’t attempt the triple in Beijing, his frontside double 1440 can anchor a gold-medal run. The 20-year-old has said he wasn’t ready mentally or physically in his first Games. Now? Watch out.

Queralt Castellet, Spain

If anyone has the opportunity to spoil Chloe Kim’s quest for consecutive Olympic gold medals, it’s Queralt Castellet. Spain’s greatest winter athlete of all time, Castellet competed in her first Olympics at the 2006 Turin Games at the age of 16. Against social pressures to marry and start a family, she continued to pursue professional snowboarding and now, in her fifth Games, she hopes to win her first medal. Given her recent success, it seems likely. The 32-year-old has landed on the podium in seven of her last seven contests. With the guidance of her coach, two-time Olympic silver medalist Danny Kass, she’s riding better now than she did in her teens and twenties, focusing on perfecting the elements of her run—like making more tricks switch and focusing on more degrees of rotation. Castellet became the second woman ever to land a 1260 in the halfpipe in 2012. In 2021, she dialed in her cab 1080. (On the Instagram video, Kim commented, “Yeah Q!!! So sick!”) Viewers can expect a high-flying race to gold between Castellet and Kim in women’s halfpipe.

Scotty James, Australia

The narrative in men’s halfpipe is that you don’t have a triple, you won’t be able to contend for a podium at the Beijing Games. But Scotty James doesn’t necessarily think that’s the case. James didn’t need a triple to beat Ayumu Hirano at X Games…though he just may have one in his bag. The Aussie doesn’t say much about the private halfpipe he’s been training on in Switzerland and what he did there…but he did take several months away from competition to put himself in the best position to succeed in Beijing. That seemed like the right strategy when he took X Games gold in January with a run that included three double 1260s, including one done switch, and a double 1440. James’ propensity to do all of his tricks backside or switch backside has pushed the entire field to match him. “The Japanese are definitely a force, and I think I take pride in myself not just against them but for me it’s important that I just want to ride the best that I possibly can,” James told me. “I know when I show up and I commit to my vision and I execute it well then winning can happen. I think there is this façade that they’re a force, which they are, but there’s elements I can bring to the table and I’ve been working hard to stand on top.”

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