{"id":1788167,"date":"2026-02-23T00:00:00","date_gmt":"2026-02-22T21:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1788167"},"modified":"2026-02-23T00:00:00","modified_gmt":"2026-02-22T21:00:00","slug":"the-verdict-the-olympic-snowboard-judges-on-the-womens-slopestyle-controversy-and-more-in-their-own-words","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=1788167","title":{"rendered":"The Verdict | The Olympic Snowboard Judges on the Women\u2019s Slopestyle Controversy (and More) in their Own Words"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"c-article-copy\">\n<p class=\"c-article-body__dropcap\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Opinions, as the old saying goes, are like arseholes: everybody\u2019s got one, and they often stink. Over the course of this Winter Olympics, and the six freestyle snowboard events that involved judging, plenty of people saw fit to share their opinions about the judges and their decision-making. But no event kicked up as big a stink as the women\u2019s slopestyle last Wednesday. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Whether or not he was the first, the most prominent early sharer was Todd Richards, the influential ex-pro turned NBC commentator, who emerged from his booth to tell the internet \u201cthat was the worst judging I\u2019ve ever seen at an event, ever\u201d. He went on to accuse the officials not only of \u201cshit judging\u201d but also, \u201csetting snowboarding back\u201d in the process.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"instagram-media\" style=\"background: #FFF;border: 0;border-radius: 3px;margin: 1px;max-width: 540px;min-width: 326px;padding: 0;width: calc(100% - 2px)\" data-instgrm-captioned data-instgrm-permalink=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/reel\/DU51YzpjSkB\/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&amp;igsh=NTc4MTIwNjQ2YQ==\" data-instgrm-version=\"14\">\n<div style=\"padding: 16px\">\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<div style=\"flex-direction: row;align-items: center\">\n<div style=\"background-color: #f4f4f4;border-radius: 50%;flex-grow: 0;height: 40px;margin-right: 14px;width: 40px\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"flex-direction: column;flex-grow: 1;justify-content: center\">\n<div style=\"background-color: #f4f4f4;border-radius: 4px;flex-grow: 0;height: 14px;margin-bottom: 6px;width: 100px\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"background-color: #f4f4f4;border-radius: 4px;flex-grow: 0;height: 14px;width: 60px\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div style=\"padding: 19% 0\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"height: 50px;margin: 0 auto 12px;width: 50px\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"padding-top: 8px\">\n<div style=\"color: #3897f0;font-family: Arial,sans-serif;font-size: 14px;font-style: normal;font-weight: 550;line-height: 18px\">View this post on Instagram<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div style=\"padding: 12.5% 0\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"flex-direction: row;margin-bottom: 14px;align-items: center\">\n<div>\n<div style=\"background-color: #f4f4f4;border-radius: 50%;height: 12.5px;width: 12.5px\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"background-color: #f4f4f4;height: 12.5px;width: 12.5px;flex-grow: 0;margin-right: 14px;margin-left: 2px\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"background-color: #f4f4f4;border-radius: 50%;height: 12.5px;width: 12.5px\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div style=\"margin-left: 8px\">\n<div style=\"background-color: #f4f4f4;border-radius: 50%;flex-grow: 0;height: 20px;width: 20px\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"width: 0;height: 0;border-top: 2px solid transparent;border-left: 6px solid #f4f4f4;border-bottom: 2px solid transparent\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div style=\"margin-left: auto\">\n<div style=\"width: 0px;border-top: 8px solid #F4F4F4;border-right: 8px solid transparent\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"background-color: #f4f4f4;flex-grow: 0;height: 12px;width: 16px\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"width: 0;height: 0;border-top: 8px solid #F4F4F4;border-left: 8px solid transparent\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<div style=\"flex-direction: column;flex-grow: 1;justify-content: center;margin-bottom: 24px\">\n<div style=\"background-color: #f4f4f4;border-radius: 4px;flex-grow: 0;height: 14px;margin-bottom: 6px;width: 224px\"><\/div>\n<div style=\"background-color: #f4f4f4;border-radius: 4px;flex-grow: 0;height: 14px;width: 144px\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p style=\"color: #c9c8cd;font-family: Arial,sans-serif;font-size: 14px;line-height: 17px;margin-bottom: 0;margin-top: 8px;overflow: hidden;padding: 8px 0 7px;text-align: center;white-space: nowrap\"><a style=\"color: #c9c8cd;font-family: Arial,sans-serif;font-size: 14px;font-style: normal;font-weight: normal;line-height: 17px;text-decoration: none\" href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/reel\/DLi7_XAvVXF\/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=loading\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">A post shared by Todd (@ToddRichards)<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p class=\"c-article-body__dropcap\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Of course, everyone knows the algorithm loves a strongly-worded statement in an easily-digestible, 9:16 video format. But it seemed like there was enough substance to Todd\u2019s central allegation\u2014that Mari Fukada\u2019s run, which featured two 720s, and rails that were \u201cnot that good,\u201d shouldn\u2019t have beaten some of the others\u2014for it to gain traction.<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><strong>\u201cPerhaps because of its high profile, judging the Olympics is paid far less than World Cups or other contests on the circuit\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<p class=\"c-article-body__dropcap\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Certainly, other people were quick to agree, both in the comments and in their own posts. Pitchforks were sharpened, torches were lit, and metaphorical buckets of tar were soon being dumped on the hapless officials from a great height, before being seasoned with a sprinkling of feathers as conspiracy theorists waded in to blame the result on the usual suspects: the FIS, and the IOC. Everybody was enjoying the digital pile-on so much that nobody (with the notable exception of<\/span> <a href=\"https:\/\/slushthemagazine.com\/blogs\/features\/once-again-the-olympics-and-the-uncomfortable-conversation-about-judging\"><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Slush Magazine<\/span><\/i><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">) thought to question the judges themselves about what they were thinking, or why they might have awarded those scores. So, in the interests of bringing some nuance back into the debate\u2014and just getting the basic facts straight\u2014we decided to ask them.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/>\n<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Whitelines<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> spoke to Gaz Vogan and Adam \u201cBeggsy\u201d Begg over a WhatsApp call, while they were sitting next to each other on a snow-delayed train from Livigno to Milan, where they were catching their flights home. Beggsy, who\u2019s Australian, is a hugely experienced judge who was chosen to lead the panel for the Milano Cortina Games. Gaz, a fellow veteran of previous Olympics, is British. He was one of several people we interviewed (alongside Todd Richards) in the aftermath of the Beijing Games, for our <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/whitelines.com\/snowboard-culture\/lest-ye-be-judged.html\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">post-mortem article about the judging error<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u2014caused by a TV feed mistake\u2014that led to Max Parrot being awarded slopestyle gold. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">As they explain below, both Beggsy and Gaz have spent much of the intervening four years, working hard to ensure that the same thing could never happen again. They pushed for the hiring of an entirely separate camera crew, to ensure they can see angles on tricks that the regular TV feed might not show, and conducted multiple, extensive workshops with riders and coaches in the run up to the Games. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">In the interests of better communication, they also launched a podcast, <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">On the Knuckle,<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> to give extra insight into their work. And as the Games kicked off, Beggsy set up a WhatsApp group with 47 commentators and snowboard pundits for all the major international TV networks\u2014a WhatsApp group to which <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Whitelines <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">was added, alongside Tim and Ed from the BBC, and Todd Richards. The hope was this would help stop misunderstandings\u2014willful, or otherwise.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">All of this has been off their own bat, and none of it (it goes without saying) was motivated by financial gain. As we reported in <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/whitelines.com\/snowboard-culture\/lest-ye-be-judged.html\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">the aftermath of Beijing<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">, Olympic snowboard judging is a pretty thankless task\u2014something people do for love, not money. Over the course of the Milano Cortina Games, by our estimates, Gaz, Beggsy, and their colleagues would have scrutinised over 600 competition runs\u2014as well as attending hours of practice, to get an idea of the level ahead of time. But perhaps because of its high profile, judging the Olympics is paid far less than World Cups or other contests on the circuit. They got free accommodation, food, and a day rate of 125 Swiss francs (\u00a3119.50). But if they wanted to snowboard in Livigno themselves, they had to buy their own liftpass.<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/>\n<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">After wrapping up our call with Beggsy and Gaz (who eventually missed his flight because their train was delayed), we spoke to Iztok Sumatic, the Slovenian judge, who\u2019s worked on every Winter Games since<\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/whitelines.com\/snowboard-culture\/scene\/interviews\/sochi-2014-olympic-slopestyle-judge-speaks-his-mind.html\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Sochi 2014<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">, and took <\/span><a href=\"https:\/\/whitelines.com\/snowboard-culture\/scene\/interviews\/all-rise-olympic-head-snowboard-judge-explains-what-happened-during-the-slopestyle-finals.html\"><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">most of the heat after Beijing<\/span><\/a><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">, as head judge. He was tired, having driven through the night with a friend after the end of the final contest. But eager to explain what had happened. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">We talked about the same topics, so where relevant, we\u2019ve included Iztok\u2019s responses to the questions below. As standard, our conversations have been edited for clarity, flow, and length. <\/span>\u200b<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div class=\"c-article-copy\">\n<h3><b>Whitelines: For readers who might not know, can you just run us through how snowboard judging at the Olympics works? <\/b><b><br \/>\n<\/b><b><\/b><\/h3>\n<p><b>Gaz: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Events like big air and pipe are judged on overall impression, based on the five DAVE-P criteria: Difficulty, Amplitude, Variety, Execution and Progression. So there are six scoring judges, who each award a score out of 100 for each run, and then Beggs, as the head judge. The head judge compiles the scores, knocks off the highest and lowest to eliminate outliers, and averages out the remaining four to arrive at the final score. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">With slopestyle it\u2019s a bit different. You have six section judges [one for each feature on the course], and then three composition judges [who look at the whole run, and whose scores are averaged out] and a partridge in a pear tree\u2014or Beggsy, again, as head judge. Each section is judged out of 10 points. The composition judges give scores out of 100, but a little tabulation system compresses it down to a score out of 40, so that the total score which gets sent to broadcasters is out of 100.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><strong>\u00a0\u201cAfter the incident in Beijing four years ago, we realised we couldn\u2019t really trust the OBS [Olympic Broadcast Service] to give us the consistent camera angles that we wanted.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<h6>Gaz Vogen<\/h6>\n<\/blockquote>\n<h3><b>And the head judge doesn\u2019t score, right?\u00a0<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><b>Beggsy:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> No. But I\u2019ll discuss sort of where the score is sitting. When I get all the section scores in it\u2019ll be discussed and I\u2019ll say, \u201cokay, that\u2019s our current second place. It\u2019s got first place on this section, this section, and this section, but a bad rail, is everyone happy with their scores?\u201d And someone might pipe up and say \u201coh there was a hand touch on jump one, or an early off [a rail]\u201d. So we communicate the facts around the run, and based off those facts, the composition judges chuck in their scores.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><b>You used to talk about three \u2018overall impression judges\u2019 in slopestyle, instead of \u2018composition judges\u2019. Is that change of language significant?<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><b>Iztok:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> The main thing it means is that trick difficulty is more under the section judges. Difficulty is still there in the composition judges scores as a criteria, but the most important is the execution and the variety in terms of the tricks, and of the direction of spin, and off-axis, and grabs and all of that. So difficulty is not as integrated in the composition score as it was before.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<h3><b>OK, that\u2019s obviously changed since Beijing. What other changes have you made to make sure that runs with missed grabs don\u2019t win a gold medal?<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><b>Gaz: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">After the incident in Beijing four years ago, we realised we couldn\u2019t really trust the OBS [Olympic Broadcast Service] to give us the consistent camera angles that we wanted. For us as judges, the best way is to see the same angle for every single runner, because the perspective of the camera will change our perception of the trick. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">OBS [who operate all the cameras at the games, and give the same feed to all broadcasters around the world] were difficult to work with\u2014they had loads of cameras, but wouldn\u2019t give us full access or any kind of control over the angle, we brought in our own production team from a company called Alibaba. And they effectively managed our camera angles for big air, pipe and slope.<\/span><\/p>\n<figure class=\"c-article-body-figure c-article-body-figure--sm c-article-body-figure--align-center\">\n<div class=\"c-article-body-figure__image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"c-article-body-image c-article-body-image--sm c-article-body-image--align-none js-lazyload\" src=\"image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIABAP\/\/\/wAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" data-src=\"https:\/\/whitelines.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Trampolino_Big_Air_-_Livigno_-_05-1-scaled.jpg\" width=\"399\" height=\"266\"><\/div><figcaption class=\"c-article-body-figure__caption\">The Olympic Big Air Jump. Photo: Wikimedia<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<h3><b>So you had your own feed, that was clearer than what we saw? <\/b><b><br \/>\n<\/b><b><\/b><\/h3>\n<p><b>Gaz: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Well I\u2019ve heard terrible things about how the big air looked from the OBS angle, whereas we didn\u2019t have a single missed trick from the camera the entire Games. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/>\n<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<h3><strong>\u201cAnd we made it clear to riders that all four directions needed to be included down the course, because it was essentially a seven feature course\u201d<\/strong><\/h3>\n<h6>Adam Begg<\/h6>\n<\/blockquote>\n<h3><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/>\n<\/span><b>You saw everything clearly then. So why did Mari Fukada\u2019s run score more highly than Zoi\u2019s Sadowski-Synott\u2019s, which got silver, or Kokomo Murase\u2019s, which won bronze?\u00a0<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><b>Gaz: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">I guess if we start with Koko, the big sticking point from a composition perspective was the lack of a switch backside spin. That hurts her score when it comes to meeting the \u2018variety\u2019 criteria. Zoi and Mari had all four directions. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/>\n<\/span><b>Beggsy: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">And we made it clear to riders that all four directions needed to be included down the course, because it was essentially a seven feature course<\/span><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<h3><b>And that was communicated in the rider meetings before?<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><b>Gaz: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yes, both in the Team Captain\u2019s Meeting [where coaches and rider representatives meet with event officials before a contest], and directly to coaches and riders on a WhatsApp group. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/>\n<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/>\n<\/span><b>I guess that explains why Koko\u2019s <\/b><b><i>trick<\/i><\/b><b> score was higher than Zoi\u2019s [49.80, compared to 48.95] but her <\/b><b><i>composition<\/i><\/b><b> score [36.0 compared to 38.53] was lower?<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><b>Gaz: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeh, that\u2019s what composition kind of takes into account, it\u2019s the variety\u2014so all four directions of spin\u2014the execution, and the progression, to an extent. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/>\n<\/span><b>Beggsy: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Also with Koko\u2019s best-scoring run, her first rail was a bad score. It was an easy rail, easy trick, but poorly-executed.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><strong>\u201cThe key point with Mari\u2019s run was it was absolutely flawless execution.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<h6>Gaz Vogen<\/h6>\n<\/blockquote>\n<h3><b>Looking at the <\/b><a href=\"https:\/\/medias2.fis-ski.com\/pdf\/2026\/SB\/6202\/2026SB6202ANF.pdf\"><b>score sheet breakdowns<\/b><\/a><b>, it says one of Koko\u2019s rails was switch backside boardslide. That doesn\u2019t count as a switch backside rotation?\u00a0<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><b>Beggsy: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">If you think about the actual rotation, it\u2019s a switch back board, so she\u2019s still facing forward. It\u2019s basically a cab boardslide, so it\u2019s not a switch backside rotation.<\/span><b><br \/>\n<\/b><b><\/b><\/p>\n<h3><b><br \/>\n<\/b><b>OK yes, I get you. And what about Todd Richards\u2019 point, which was (to paraphrase a bit) \u201chow can a run with two 720s win in this day and age? In 2026?\u201d<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><b>Gaz:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> The key point with Mari\u2019s run was it was absolutely flawless execution. She was locked over the rails, had all the grabs\u2014the execution was completely flawless. If you look at Zoi as the key comparison, because she was in second, it was that second section with the frontside lipslide that she slipped out on. So yes Zoi had a very nice jump line of 900, 1080, 1080, but one of the sections already was down at a 4.6. Taking that execution into account was kind of key.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Beggsy: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Mari\u2019s was the only flawless run on the day. Every other run had little instabilities, whether it\u2019s an early-off, or a hand touch, or an edge of some sort. This one was flawless from top to bottom.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Gaz: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Mari also had all the four directions, and then also the front seven at the end was off the toes. So that gives her a little boost in terms of the composition and variety scores because she\u2019s got different take-offs. Not a gigantic boost, but it\u2019s definitely taken into consideration.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<h3><b>Ah yes, you said in your WhatsApp chat with commentators (and me) that \u201ctake-offs will be a focus for the season, and will be used as a separator if needed\u201d. Where does stuff like that get agreed on?\u00a0<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><b>Gaz: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">With these criteria, we spent quite a lot of time with the community the last two or three seasons doing riders\u2019 meetings, and getting their perspective. So the idea of different take-offs being scored higher comes from the riders themselves. <\/span><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<h3><b>They think it\u2019s harder to take-off like that, so it merits a higher score?<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><b>Gaz: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yes exactly. But the grand scheme of what came back from those meetings was that even with progressive tricks, riders still want them to be well-executed, with long held grabs and so on. It\u2019s a nice way of us not turning into [ski] aerials. <\/span><\/p>\n<h3><b>Right, the execution score has always been the closest thing to \u201cstyle points,\u201d basically. It\u2019s kind of ironic that many of the same people who are complaining about two, flawlessly-executed 720s winning a women\u2019s slopestyle contest have been saying for years they want to see slower, stylish spins in contests, rather than spin to win\u2026<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><b><br \/>\n<\/b><b>Gaz:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Well, yeah.<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><strong><span style=\"font-size: 36.864px\">\u201c\u2026if suddenly a switchback rodeo 12 scores well, then more people start trying them.\u201d<\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<h6>Gaz Vogen<\/h6>\n<\/blockquote>\n<h3><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/>\n<\/span><b><br \/>\n<\/b><b>Switching to big air, I noticed in the men\u2019s final, Frank Jobin was getting high scores for his double rodeo and switch backside double rodeo, even though they were \u2018only\u2019 a 1440 and a 1260, and everyone else was spinning 1800s and 1980s. That\u2019s also to do with it being a different take off?<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><b>Gaz: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yes and a different axis of rotation. That\u2019s been a common theme at least the past two seasons of World Cup big air contests. And again, it comes from the riders. If the riders want to go spin to win, then awesome, we\u2019ll judge like that. But when the riders are telling us that rodeos or weirder, low-rotational tricks on different axes\u2014like Eli Bouchard\u2019s tricks\u2014are harder and deserve more points, then we\u2019re happy to reward those. And we\u2019re happy to work with the community to figure out where, for example, Eli Bouchard\u2019s trick sits next to the range of more traditional spins.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/>\n<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/>\n<\/span><b>Right. There were more of those\u2014from Eli and others\u2014in big air qualifiers than in the final. And I actually kind of agreed with Todd Richards, when he accidentally had that \u2018hot mic moment\u2019 on, and said the final was more boring than qualifying because of that.<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><b>Beggsy:<\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> I mean, if you look at qualifications, we had a number of switch rodeos, butter tricks, pullbacks, all that sort of parallel direction of the sport, and they were awarded [high points]. They all got really good scores, amongst the 18s. But most of the riders doing those tricks didn\u2019t get a backup trick. Unfortunately Frank was the only one to get through the finals. So definitely the messaging [to the riders] was there in qualifications. But the people that got through to finals ended up going down the spin to win road.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/>\n<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Gaz: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Things like that always do indirectly end up influencing the sport, because if suddenly a switchback rodeo 12 scores well, then more people start trying them. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/>\n<\/span><b>Beggsy: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">But that all comes from the chats we\u2019ve had to riders in Big Air about slowing down the space race of extra 180s. It\u2019s this creative, unique, different axis spin, alley oops in halfpipe, all these other things that they\u2019re pushing. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/>\n<\/span><b>Iztok: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">It\u2019s like the spark that was lit by giving the gold medal in Sochi to Sage [Kotsenburg] with his Holy Crail grab. Other people started concentrating more on different grabs. I guess that\u2019s sort of what we\u2019re doing here, and the same in halfpipe.<\/span><\/p>\n<figure class=\"c-article-body-figure c-article-body-figure--lg c-article-body-figure--align-none\">\n<div class=\"c-article-body-figure__image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"c-article-body-image c-article-body-image--lg c-article-body-image--align-none js-lazyload\" src=\"image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIABAP\/\/\/wAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" data-src=\"https:\/\/whitelines.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/1024px-Die_Halfpipe_des_Livigno_Snow_Park_an_den_olympischen_Spielen_2026.jpg\" width=\"1024\" height=\"576\"><\/div><figcaption class=\"c-article-body-figure__caption\">2026 Olympic Halfpipe. Photo: Wikimedia<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<h3><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/>\n<\/span><b>I wanted to talk about halfpipe. Scotty James [who finished second] looked visibly unhappy with his score, compared to Yuto Totsuka\u2019s gold medal run. What happened there?<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><b>Gaz: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The execution was probably the biggest point, because on Scotty\u2019s first hit a<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">nd his last hit he came in a little bit under-rotated, so didn\u2019t have the clearest landings. Scotty had really good combinations, like from the back 10 to switch back 14, and then from the switch back 14 to the back 16 that he wanted to do on that last run [when he fell]. But on the second run it was execution. Yuto was more flawless and had\u2014I almost call it four and a half directions, because it\u2019s the four primary directions plus the alley oop.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><b>Would Scotty have won if he\u2019d landed that final 16?\u00a0<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><b>Gaz: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Well, you\u2019re getting into hypotheticals. But it\u2019s an NBD [never been done] combo. Maybe not a complete NBD actually? But definitely an RBD\u2014rarely been done.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Iztok: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">You can say Scotty was very close.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/>\n<\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<h3><strong>\u201cRyusei\u2019s run just blew my mind.\u201d<\/strong><\/h3>\n<h6>Iztok Sumatic<\/h6>\n<\/blockquote>\n<h3><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/>\n<\/span><b>Interesting you mentioned the alley oop. Ryusei Yamada had this crazy alley oop off the heels, that presumably scored higher?<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><b>Beggsy: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, it was a switch frontside alley-oop 10 off the heels, which is another NBD in competition. Off the heels, back up the pipe.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/>\n<\/span><b>Yeah, that was crazy. <\/b><b><br \/>\n<\/b><b><\/b><\/h3>\n<p><b>Beggsy: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah, that\u2019s one of those really unique tricks that he\u2019s the only person in the world doing it.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p><b>Iztok: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">No disrespect to the stellar amplitude of Valentino Guseli. No disrespect to Ayumu\u2019s run, Jake Pate\u2019s run, like I could name them all, but all I\u2019m saying is that alley oop was <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">so<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> on point. Ryusei\u2019s run just blew my mind. And when it comes to progression, so this is me specifically talking as a scoring judge at this particular event, the alley oops is that one frontier to still be explored and where you can still push the progression in a big way. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/>\n<\/span><b>Gaz: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">With that <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">progression criteria we look at whether it\u2019s a new rotation, or whether it\u2019s just elements of a trick that push the sport forward [like a unique take-off]. Ryusei\u2019s trick scores big partly on the difficulty\u2014to go switch alley-oop rodeo mid-run, and then follow up with a pretty big back double 10\u2014and partly on the progression. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">We look at tricks like that, the more people that start <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">doing<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> that trick, then the less kind of progressive reward it gets. But it would still have the difficulty reward.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<h3><b>Interesting, so the more unique a trick is, the higher it scores. Scotty was one of the people who pushed that in the last four to eight years, introducing his unique switch back 12 ahead of Pyeongchang I think it was?<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><b>Gaz: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The irony was yeah that Scotty was probably the first one on that kind of variety of having all four directions and different takeoffs.<\/span><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<blockquote>\n<p><strong>\u201cYeah but women\u2019s big air goes down as my favourite contest I\u2019ve judged.\u201d<\/strong><\/p>\n<h6>Gaz Vogen<\/h6>\n<\/blockquote>\n<h3><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/>\n<\/span><b>But everyone has caught up?<\/b><b><br \/>\n<\/b><b><\/b><\/h3>\n<p><b>Iztok: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">I would say the top eight athletes all overcame themselves, and that was the raddest, the most progressive, the best snowboarding in half pipe I\u2019ve ever seen.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><b>It felt like a pretty progressive Olympics overall. With some caveats, obviously\u2014the big air jump wasn\u2019t massive for example.<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><b>Gaz: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Yeah but women\u2019s big air goes down as my favourite contest I\u2019ve judged. Women\u2019s snowboarding is just progressing at a very rapid rate nowadays, and that was on display. And then the community around women\u2019s snowboarding is so sick. So when Kokomo lands, everyone\u2019s like cheering her on and clapping her and stuff.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Beggsy: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">And the fact that Kokomo got reduced to tears when she won a medal. You don\u2019t see her crying over an X Games medal, but yet she was sort of ecstatic when she won that one.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>Gaz: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">And the fact that Mia went for the back 16, which I don\u2019t think she\u2019s ever landed?<\/span><\/p>\n<figure class=\"c-article-body-figure c-article-body-figure--lg c-article-body-figure--align-center\">\n<div class=\"c-article-body-figure__image\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"c-article-body-image c-article-body-image--lg c-article-body-image--align-none js-lazyload\" src=\"image\/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIABAP\/\/\/wAAACH5BAEKAAEALAAAAAABAAEAAAICTAEAOw==\" data-src=\"https:\/\/whitelines.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/Mia-Brookes-Olympic-Big-Air.jpeg\" width=\"1170\" height=\"1158\"><\/div><figcaption class=\"c-article-body-figure__caption\">Mia sending it in Big Air. Photo: Instagram\/Mia-Brookes<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<h3><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/>\n<\/span><b>Apparently she\u2019s never even tried it on snow before. As a Brit, I\u2019ve got to ask, if she held onto that, would she have won?<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><b>Gaz: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Kind of hard to say. I would have definitely given her a shot of being up there and thereabouts.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/>\n<\/span><b>Very diplomatic haha. Anyway, thanks for talking us through it all.<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><b>Gaz: <\/b><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Thank you. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/>\n<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"><br \/>\n<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">A few hours after our interview wrapped, Gaz relayed a message from Beggsy via text: \u201cCan you let <\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Whitelines<\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> know that I back the team 100 percent. There is nobody I would rather have on such a big event. Their experience, knowledge, work ethic, and calmness under pressure was why they were selected for this. They judged to the criteria and the guidelines set in riders meetings. And that despite how it went down in slope they are the current best in the world!\u201d<\/span><\/i><\/p>\n<p>\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Header photo: \u200bAndrei Antipov via ShutterStcck<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Opinions, as the old saying goes, are like arseholes: everybody\u2019s got one, and they often stink. Over the course of this Winter Olympics, and the six freestyle snowboard events that involved judging, plenty of people saw fit to share their opinions about the judges and their decision-making. But no event kicked up as big a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[226,280],"class_list":["post-1788167","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-crawlmanager","tag-whitelines-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1788167","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1788167"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1788167\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1788167"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1788167"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1788167"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}