ASPEN, Colo. — There won’t be any Olympic boycotts from snowboarders in 2018. With six more medals up for grabs, there’s even more reason to embrace the mainstream event that brings the extreme sport into the national consciousness once every four years.
But to think that snowboarding’s relationship with the Olympics — and that of freeskiing, its closest brethren in the Games — has smoothed in the 18 years since it made its debut is to miss the nuance. The community generally has accepted the benefits it can glean from the Olympics, and top riders wouldn’t consider boycotting as Terje Haakonsen did for its debut in 1998.
The relationship between the two remains uneasy, though.
The sports’ inclusion in the Games has given them a bigger stage and helped draw people to snowboarding and freeskiing, but it hasn’t been enough to erase continuing concerns from athletes about contest and course safety, qualification events and governance.
The Olympics have taken on a more X Games-flavor in the past two decades, but athletes still largely prefer the event that first gave the sports’ their biggest stage.
“You don’t have the best people going to the best contests,” said Sage Kotsenburg, who won Olympic gold in snowboard slopestyle in its debut in Sochi. “You don’t even have the best courses anymore. Some of the courses you qualify on in the Olympics are terrible, not really up to up to par at all.
“I think it’s kind of crazy, but also it’s good for everyone to see snowboarding on such a big stage. ... You can’t really hate on that because so many people do get stoked on it.”
Those conflicting feelings are common among riders and skiers, who still look at X Games, the Dew Tour and U.S. Open as among their better events. The U.S. Open begins March 2 in Vail.
That unease has always been there, though. Seeking to draw a younger audience, the International Olympic Committee added snowboarding to the 1998 Nagano Games. The IOC designated the International Ski Federation (FIS) as snowboarding’s governing body, a decision that has generated conflict since then.
A sweep by the U.S. men in the halfpipe in Salt Lake City in 2002 with a gold medal for American Kelly Clark solidified the sports’ place in the Olympics.
Since then the IOC has continued to add events made popular in the X Games. Snowboard cross came in 2006, and ski cross came four years later. In 2014, freeskiing got events in the halfpipe and slopestyle. Snowboarding slopestyle was also added.
Since the 1994 Games — the last without these sports — 16 competitions were added for snowboarding and freeskiing, nearly as many as the 18 added in all other sports. (Cross country skiing added two more in 2002 that were cut in the next Olympics.)
“We definitely don’t need the Olympics because we would be fine without it, but it’s a huge help to get more eyes on the sport,” said Mark McMorris, who won bronze in snowboard slopestyle in Sochi. “It’s really good if you do well there for your career.”
Athletes agreed the Olympics can bring exposure in ways their traditional events can’t. And for those who win, sponsorships and some measure of fame can be the perks.
“I think that there should be an appreciation for what the events bring to the sport, not a competition between the two,” Clark said of the Olympics and the X Games.
Mixed with that appreciation are concerns, ones heard most loudly among snowboarders who still resist being governed by a ski federation.
Courses in FIS events are not as good as ones they get in the X Games, skiers and snowboarders say, and are sometimes run in unsafe weather conditions. Many athletes have to compete in FIS events to qualify for their Olympic teams, loading up their schedule in Olympic years and increasing risk of injury. They’d like to see more of their regular, top-tier events — especially the X Games — serve as qualifiers in Olympic years.
“We had to do some FIS contests and contests that nobody really do normally, beside an amateur, I would say,” said Canadian Sebastien Toutant, who noted the Olympics do add value in allowing athletes to compete for their country.
“A lot of us don’t like to be told what to do,” said Olympic ski slopestyle gold medalist Joss Christensen. “Now it’s cool to see how big our sport’s grown, and I think we just have to keep our foot down to make sure everything goes the way we want it to go and that the world sees us for who we really are.”
FIS didn’t respond to a request for comment.
The rub seems likely to persist for the foreseeable future. Snowboarding big air has been added for men and women in for the 2018 Olympics in Pyeongchang, South Korea, which held slopestyle test events last weekend. The athletes appreciate the exposure for their sports, but they’d like it to be a bit more on their terms.
“It’s a different generation of athletes, but the power structure of the International Ski Federation, there may be different actors involved but it’s the same structure,” said David Wallechinsky, president of the International Society of Olympic Historians. “In a way, the athletes, they need a stronger voice.”
That’s part of the rub. Because events like the X Games or Dew Tour are part of the contest scene annually, athlete input has high value. And the industry is multi-faceted, with filming, backcountry riding and skiing in addition to contests.
So while snowboarders and freeskiers have come to embrace what the Olympics can bring, they haven't done so fully despite the IOC’s eagerness to embrace more of these events.
“Thank God we have a bigger sport than the Olympics, but the bummer is that we’re the most viewed sport in the Olympics and the courses aren’t as good as this one,” said snowboarding Danny Davis at the X Games in January. “We have better events."
