Ski Halfpipe’s Olympic Journey Steps up With Inaugural Grand Prix
Big Air champion Bobby Brown, who visited Australia earlier this year, will make his halfpipe debut at Copper Mountain. IMage:: Darren Teastale
Ski Halfpipe
Ski Halfpipe is taking another step in the journey to Olympic inclusion this week with the inaugural International Skiing Federation (FIS) sanctioned Grand Prix ski halfpipe event at Copper Mountain, Colorado, beginning 8 December.
Ski halfpipe’s Olympic status is not yet a sure thing, despite being officially added to FIS’s list of proposed additions to the 2014 Sochi Winter Olympic Games earlier this year. Becoming a Grand Prix event – the Grand Prix is a FIS sanctioned Olympic qualifying series – is just one of the ways ski halfpipe is moving to comply with the criteria for Olympic ratification.
Both men’s and women’s ski halfpipe will be contested this week at Copper Mountain, however ski halfpipe is not on the program for the second US Grand Prix event at Mammoth Mountain, California, in March 2011
Despite the FIS seal of approval, the IOC is yet to make a decision on ski halfpipe, a meeting of the IOC committee at the end of October failed to return a ruling on several proposed new events including ski halfpipe, along with ski and snowboard slopestyle – both events represent a push to make winter Olympic sports more appealing to a youth audience.
In the meantime skiers from the extreme side of the sport are coming into the FIS fold, the competitor lineup for the Copper Mountain Grand Prix is a who’s who of X Games and Dew Tour – both events that have harboured the elements of skiing, and snowboarding, previously outside the FIS ‘establishment’.
X Games and Dew Tour champions such as the USA’s Bobby Brown and Simon Dumont will compete in the first FIS sanctioned event of their illustrious careers, Wednesday 8 December will also mark big air and slopestyle specialist Brown’s competitive halfpipe debut. That the big names of freestyle skiing are clamouring to earn FIS points makes it clear the competitor field of the sport at least are hoping for the chance to earn Olympic glory in 2014.
FIS World Championships – another important Olympic criteria – for ski halfpipe have been held since 2004 and there have been several FIS World Cups, all of which speak to the efforts being made to ensure the IOC is convinced the sport will make for a successful Olympic event; one of the comments made by the Committee at its 30 October meeting was the need to see evidence of a sufficient competitive field – a comment mostly directed towards snowboard slopestyle, however, with the IOC mainly concerned with performance at FIS events and the fragmentation of competitions of extreme snowsports, which makes it hard for the IOC to quantify the international ski halfpipe field, the sport must exhibit itself to best effect over the coming year to convince the IOC of its depth.
Qualifiers for the Grand Prix ski halfpipe will begin 9am Wednesday 8 December Colorado local time and by 1:30pm Friday 10 December someone will be crowned the first Grand Prix ski halfpipe champion, their first step towards Olympic gold.
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