How to watch snowboard slopestyle at the Winter Olympics: A guide to understanding and appreciating the sport

Snowboard slopestyle is a young event in the Winter Olympic Games -- it made its first appearance just four years ago in Sochi, Russia. Combining elements of park riding, rail riding, and big air jumps, slopestyle is a neat way to get to appreciate every part of what makes snowboarding what it is. Plus, judging is highly subjective, which leads to lots of great arguments and bitching when the scores come, as well as great disappointed looks from snowboarders who have to pretend that they don’t care if they score well or not, because it’s snowboarding, but who all really do care if they score well or not.

Americans are primed to do extremely well in the event. Jamie Anderson is back after her gold medal win four years ago, accompanied by 2014 teammate Jessika Jenson and newcomers Julia Marino and Hailey Langland, all of whom have a shot at the podium. On the men’s side, it’s a trio of newcomers leading the charge in Chris Corning, Red Gerard, and Kyle Mack, with Ryan Stassel returning to add some veteran leadership. Medaling will be a bit tougher sledding, or I guess boarding, on the men’s side, but that doesn’t mean we can’t SHOCK THE WORLD.

You can find full snowboarding results here.

Men’s snowboard slopestyle qualifying will be televised Feb. 9 at 8 p.m. ET with the final televised the next night, Feb. 10, at 8 p.m. ET. Women’s snowboard slopestyle qualifying will be televised Feb. 10 at 11:30 p.m. ET with the final on Feb. 11 at 8 p.m. ET. All will be shown on NBC, and online at NBCOlympics.com and the NBC Sports app. You can also live stream NBC, NBCSN, and the Olympic Channel coverage via Fubo.TV on your computer or mobile devices.

Snowboarding, I think anyway, is just about as beautiful a sport as there is, and slopestyle combines all of the elements that make it great. The rail and wall portion allows you to see snowboarding in its park habitat, which emphasizes how a rider interacts with the world around him or her, and the big air sections let you see, well, big fucking air. They’re flying everyone. FLYING THROUGH THE AIR.

Slopestyle is basically a combination of park riding and big air, where riders start on a technical portion of rails and walls, and then progress to three massive jumps, which they fly off of and do very impressive tricks, indeed. Final scores are out of 100, which is said to be weighted by 60 percent trick scores and 40 percent overall impression. If it sounds like that gives a boatload of leeway for judges, you would be extremely right. (More on that to come.) Riders are judged not only on difficulty, amplitude, and variety, but on “progression,” which factors in how the tricks are linked together.

The big debate raging in competitive snowboarding over the last five years or so is on the concept of “style.” As the sport gets pushed toward more spins, more flips, bigger moves, etc., a contingent of purists are fighting back, saying that pro snowboarders are becoming nothing more than gymnasts, and the flips-and-spins arms race is producing soulless snowboarding that doesn’t look cool. (There’s no bigger insult in snowboarding than saying something doesn’t look cool.)

This all came to a head at the last Olympics, when Sage Kotsenburg, a big proponent of the school of style, won gold despite not executing as difficult tricks as other riders. (He then retired from competitive snowboarding.) It was seen as a statement from the judges at the time, but this time, who knows? But talk about that. It’ll impress people.

American Hailey Langland is 17 years old (!), and while slightly more likely to medal in the Big Air competition, she also has a great chance to find the podium in slopestyle. She recently worked a double cork 1080 -- three full spins and two flips in one jump -- into her repertoire, which is just as flabbergasting to watch as you might imagine.

Americans have done extremely well in slopestyle in its short Olympic history. At the 2014 Olympics games, the first time slopestyle was an event, Kotsenburg and American Jamie Anderson took home the gold. Did we basically invent the sport? We sure did. So good on us for dominating it. 12 FLAMING EAGLES OUT OF 12.

I like this one due to the twist ending.