Why Is the Shaun White Dominated Snowboarding Event Called ?Half-Pipe??

Snowboarding has been one of the major attractions of the winter games since its addition to the Olympics program in 1998. It’s fascinating to watch a snowboarder perform all these remarkable tricks with nothing but a skateboard. However, snowboarding is not just about skating on the ice. It has different categories and competitions that make it even more interesting.

The American legend and the best snowboarder in the world, Shaun White, has won 3 Olympic golds in the halfpipe competition. Beijing Olympics would be the last time he would perform his tricks on the u-shaped ice ramp. However, do you know enough about the snowboarding event of the halfpipe, the 35-year-old has dominated for so long?

What is halfpipe snowboarding?

Halfpipe is the most popular competition in snowboarding. It is played on a U-shaped ramp in the shape of a half-cylinder.

Their dimensions are usually between 11 to 22 feet in height, with a 16 to 18 degrees of slope on the walls, and as per the FIS snowboard world cup rules, the width between the 22 feet walls should be 64 feet.

A snowboarder enters from the top end of one wall and goes down with a speed to climb on the opposite wall in a to-and-fro motion. While airborne, snowboarders do various tricks like flipping or spinning and they’re judged on the difficulty of the trick and how well they’ve executed it. The snowboarder who performs the most difficult tricks with apt execution gets the highest score.

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The halfpipes are over 16 feet in height and, with a vertical slope of almost 90 degrees, are known as ‘Super pipes’.

History of snowboarding

Snowboarding began as a house game back in 1965 when an engineer named Sherman Poppen designed a toy for his daughters to play on the ice. He combined two skis together while attaching a rope to one end to control the ski. It received certain modifications during the 60s and 70s but was originally inspired by sledding, surfing, and skiing. The game eventually got so popular that it was included in the Nagano Winter Olympics in 1998.

In the Beijing Winter Olympics 2022, the men’s category will have Big Air, Cross, Halfpipe, Giant Slalom, and Slopestyle as the five major competitions, while the women’s category will have four competitions leaving Slopestyle. There is also a mixed team cross snowboarding event which will be worth watching.

Can Shaun White pull another gold in his favorite event ‘halfpipe’ before saying goodbye to snowboarding?