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

At 20 years old, halfpipe snowboarding is a relatively new addition to the Winter Olympic Games. It’s been going on for much longer than that, of course, which is where some of the tension arises during the Olympics. A lot of the snowboarders who made the sport what it is prefer a looser style of scoring, where instead of precision, it’s style (or “steeze,” in snowboard speak, which is a combination of “style” and “ease”) matters most. But basically, the goal here is to get as high as you can when you pop out of the half pipe and do the coolest tricks possible while you’re in the air.

You’ll be able to watch the Olympics on NBC and its network of channels, as well as streaming live online at NBC Sports.

Feb. 11: Women’s halfpipe qualifying (11:30 p.m. ET)
Feb. 12: Women’s halfpipe final (8 p.m.), Men’s halfpipe qualifying (11 p.m.)
Feb. 13: Men’s halfpipe final (8:30 p.m)

Because these people are so sick, man! They’re the chillest! Have you ever heard snowboarders talk to one another? They say things like, “I’m gonna head out to shred the gnar,” and “Lick it like a stamp and send it!”, and throw up shaka signs with their hands all the time. They also have hilarious names for tricks, including the K-Fed, which was named after Kevin Federline for some reason (if you’re the first person to land a trick, you get to name it)

But, basically: snowboarders know how to have a good time, which comes through in the huge tricks they pull as they pop out of the pipe, spin around, and then act as though they didn’t just do one of the most physically impressive things in the world once they land their trick.

The half pipe is literally half of a pipe made out of snow. It’s huge: The walls are 22 feet high from the bottom to the top, and they’re graded. A rider drops in and gets kicked up out the pipe, higher and higher as they gain speed. This air time gives them a chance to pull tricks like a “cab 1080 double cork” (when a rider goes backwards up a wall, executes three full turns, and lands facing front).

Riders execute tricks up and down the pipe to count for one run. There’s a qualification round, made up of two runs each, which includes 30 riders in men’s and 24 in women’s. The final includes three runs, which is a change from previous Olympics, where you only got two. The athlete with the best score from qualifying competes last, and the athlete with the worst score goes first.

Each run gets scored by six judges on a scale of 1 to 100. Each rider’s highest and lowest score gets dropped, and the four remaining average together for the final. The judges look for amplitude (height, or air), variety in the tricks, execution (does it look good?), and progression, which means: Do something we haven’t seen before. Up the ante.

You can talk about whether the rider is spinning frontside, backside, switch backside, or switch frontside (meaning they took off from the snow backwards, which is often referred to as “cab” in the sport). You can also talk about the grabs, where a rider will reach back for their board as they spin, or hold onto it forwards by its edge between their legs.

Also, just say “steazy” a lot as you watch. That should work.

Julia Marino and Chloe Kim. Marino won two golds at the X Games this year, making her the first woman to take home two first places in over 17 years (she’s also super cool and didn’t start snowboarding full time until she was 17, if you want to feel bad about yourself). Kim is a rising star in the sport — she qualified for the Olympic team at 13, but was too young to compete in Sochi. So she’ll be looking to prove herself this year. She is also, like most snowboarders, super chill.

Oh, and some guy named Shaun White.

HIGHLY American. Snowboarding was born in the US when guys who liked to ski and surf figured out they could do both at the same time, and for a while it was the wild west of winter sports. There aren’t a lot of rules, you’re trying to go as high as you can and as hard as you can, and you’re constantly trying to one-up your competition while looking as cool as possible and pretending you don’t really care. What could be more American than that?