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Olympic snowboarding issues still to be addressed

FIS still has a few bugs to work out When snowboarding debuted at the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan, one of best halfpipe riders in the world opted not to go.
trevor_andrew
Trevor Andrew in Whistler

FIS still has a few bugs to work out

When snowboarding debuted at the 1998 Winter Olympics in Nagano, Japan, one of best halfpipe riders in the world opted not to go. Norway’s Terje Haakonsen, then 23, complained that the International Olympic Committee did not understand the sport or its athletes.

"The big wigs ride in limousines and stay in fancy hotels while the athletes live in barracks in the woods," Haakonsen said.

Burton Snowboards, Haakonsen’s sponsor, supported his decision. A marketing director for the company said, "No rider I’ve talked to is 100 per cent comfortable with the Olympic Association."

At the time most of the athletes felt that the right to organize the snowboard events should have been given to the International Snowboard Federation, which has supported the development of the sport from the beginning.

Instead, the honour was given to the Federation Internationale de Ski (FIS), which was hosting a snowboard World Cup circuit that few of the athletes were competing on. They felt the prize money was inadequate, the events were too far flung, and competing at the FIS level was not good for their sponsors or their sport. Besides, they knew the people at the ISF and were just more comfortable working with that organization.

The FIS also has a lot more rules, which were based on the rigid guidelines that alpine, freestyle, and a host of other skiing disciplines have had to follow. One example is that athletes have to wear team uniforms which were reflective of the riders’ own personal sponsors.

Another example is the FIS judging format that dictated two runs in the finals, both of which would count.

All riders fall on occasion, and the snowboarders who go the biggest and try the most difficult trips fall slightly more often than the others. These are the most respected riders in the sport, yet few of them would be able to compete at the highest level in the FIS without toning down their performances to a safe level. It didn’t seem right.

The FIS is also a lot more Euro-centric than the ISF, which is something that still needs improvement. On the 2001-2002 season calendar, only four of 17 events take place outside of Europe. That’s not convenient, or even affordable, for many North American riders or their sponsors, and even the top riders feel that an extended trip to Europe to compete in World Cup’s would do more harm than good, keeping them and their sponsors out of the limelight that matters to them.

It’s also been pointed out by more than one snowboarding magazine that FIS drug testing – especially marijuana – automatically disqualifies a number of the top riders in the world from even considering taking part.

Lastly, the FIS is still seen as a skiing organization, and snowboarders resent the fact that the IOC and the FIS see snowboarding as a subset of skiing instead of its own sports entity.

Although the FIS format has changed a number of times over the years, and they’ve bent on a number of the snowboarders’ critical issues, Haakonsen has yet to compete at a FIS event. He didn’t even bother to try and qualify for the 2002 Olympic Winter Games in Salt Lake City.

A number of riders successfully divide their time between the IFS and FIS tours, although both governing bodies have attempted in the past to make this impossible.

At the Olympic halfpipe at Park City, the FIS changed their format slightly, with only the best of two runs counting in the finals.

Three American men, Ross Powers, Danny Kass and Jarret Thomas, swept the event while Trevor Andrew, the only Canadian of four to qualify for the finals, finished in ninth.

Kelly Clark won the women’s halfpipe, followed by Doriane Vidal of France and Fabienne Reuteler of Switzerland. Canada’s Natasza Zurek, the only Canadian to qualify for the Games, fell in the qualifier and didn’t make the finals.

While the Olympics are over and the athletes have moved on, it’s clear that the FIS still has a few bugs to work out.

One of the bugs is the issue of quota spots. More than two years ago the FIS capped the number of spots open to women at 20, compared to 35 for the men.

When the FIS set the number of quota spots more than two years ago, many competitors still opted to skip the World Cup circuit in favour of ISF events. Because only about 20 competitive women would show up at any given World Cup, the FIS decided that there should only be 20 open spots at the Olympics. Whether this was a case of FIS officials punishing the girls who were competing in IFS events, or of the FIS ensuring a high level of competition isn’t known.

Either way, it was obviously far too early to make any decisions on quota spots.

"It was more a choice that the calibre of women’s talent in halfpipe was not there, so they limited the field," says Canadian Snowboard Federation president Adam Faithfull of the FIS decision. "This is no longer the case. Look at Lori Glazier, Dominique Vallee and Maelle Ricker’s results prior to the Nov. 1, 2001 points list and see that they are World Class athletes. These athletes were all in the top 35 but not in the top 20.

"One problem is that the quota field sizes are determined two years prior to the Olympic Winter Games."

The top 20 accepted into the Games also doesn’t reflect the FIS’s own top 20 prior to the Olympics. If it did, four Canadians would have had a shot at Olympic medals instead of one.

On the current World Cup halfpipe list, Ricker sits in third place overall. Glazier is 10th, Vallee is 16 th and Zurek is 17 th . While they are leading the circuit this year, Zurek was the only member of the Canadian team to earn a quota spot at the Olympics before the Nov. 1, 2001, deadline.

To determine how the Olympic quota spots would be divvied up, and who would get to go, the FIS capped the number of spots available to national Olympic committees at 14 for men and women, with a maximum of four athletes in any event. The quota for each country would be decided by the FIS points list published on Nov. 1.

Men and women required 120 Snowboard FIS points, or the equivalent of two top 16 finishes before the deadline, although their national committee could apply for accreditation to include them.

Ricker, 23, injured herself last year training for halfpipe, and the year before in a snowboard cross event, and fell short of FIS requirements.

Glazier was 12 th at the World Championships last year, and was fourth at Valle Nevado, Chile last September, which should have earned her a berth. With so many riders qualifying, however, Glazier lost out by a handful of points.

Vallee is a newcomer to the team and the circuit who has come on strong lately, but too late to earn a quota spot.

While the FIS wouldn’t bend for Canada, they did make a variety of concessions to other countries.

With two girls tied for 20 th , the FIS decided to allow both girls to compete, which brought the numbers up to 21. They also allowed a country to substitute for an injured athlete with another athlete who hadn’t met qualifications instead of going to the next girl down on the list.

They also caved into Austria’s requests to put Nici Pederzolli, number one on the World Cup circuit, in the Olympics although she hadn’t qualified for a World Cup berth. Austria claimed she missed a quota spot because of injury, although the same could have been argued for Ricker.

"The COA (Canadian Olympic Association) took the FIS to (Court of Arbitration for Sports) on snowboarding’s behalf for this very reason," says Faithfull. "Unused national quotas were reallocated by the FIS to allow two more women into the halfpipe event. Reallocation of unused quotas is not an FIS policy. The FIS used their discretion to allow this to happen."

The FIS claimed that there were seven unused quota spots that would have to be reallocated, and that the COA should have been aware of this fact before the entry deadline of Jan. 28, 2002.

"I argued that since reallocation isn’t a policy it shouldn’t have been done in the first place, but they should reallocate all the quotas since Maelle Ricker of Canada would have been able to come to the Olympics. We lost our appeal based on the fact that the hearing was on the seventh of February, past the deadline," says Faithfull.

Meanwhile members of the U.S. team went to FIS events and secured the maximum number of quota spots for their team. In the end, however, the U.S. based their athlete selection on five U.S. Grand Prix events.

As a result J.J. Thomas, Ross Powers and Danny Kass were selected to the team despite the fact that they have put in very little time on the World Cup circuit over the years, choosing to compete in lower level FIS, Nor-Am, and Continental Cup competitions in the United States and Canada over the past few years. None were ranked in the top 35 of the FIS World Cup standings this year or last.

The Olympic judging was good for the most part, but not perfect.

"Judging is super subjective in snowboarding," says Faithfull. My opinion is that Ross Powers and Danny Kass deserved first and second, but putting J.J. Tomas in third shouldn’t have happened. Not that his run wasn’t insane, but he fell on his last trick. The Japanese and Italian riders definitely got the shaft, as did (American) Tommy Czechin."

For the next Olympic Winter Games in 2006 in Turin, Italy, Faithfull says there should be a few changes.

"Increase the women’s halfpipe quota to 35 and add snowboard cross as a new discipline," he says.

"The FIS battle will be an ongoing one. It is being addresssed in June at the FIS Congress. It received a lot of attention by member nations and has been escalated up to FIS Council."

Small consolation for Ricker, Vallee or Glazier, who will likely be retired by 2006.