The slightly shabby conference room in the Sandy, Ore., Public Library was an unlikely spot to decide these questions. But the first-ever comprehensive snowboard judges manual, distributed to 30 attendees at the International Judges Commission (IJC) North American certification conference, might just be remembered as a crucial document in the evolution of the sport.
The creation of the IJC after the last Olympics, set in motion a program to standardize and improve judging at snowboard events worldwide, free of the Federation Internationale de Ski (FIS), the controlling organization of all wintersport national governing bodies, including the U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association (USSA). This makes the FIS gatekeeper to Olympic participation. However, a serious rift between virtually the entire snowboard world and the FIS over issues relating to both judging and the Olympics still overshadows the sport.
In approximately 15 years of competitive snowboard events, judging has been one of the big shortfalls. Increasing popularity of the sport means purses of $50,000 are now relatively common. But huge advances in the level of competition have made events ever harder to judge accurately. A worldwide shortage of experienced and trained judges plus wide disagreements on competition formats exacerbates the problem.
By any standard, snowboarding is a tricky sport to judge. A professional halfpipe rider will attempt perhaps eight or nine maneuvers in a 30-second routine. Under the new IJC rules, there are four judges (as opposed to FIS rules that require five judges): One for motion—any jump that does not involve more than 360 degrees of rotation; a rotations judge looking at all tricks with 360 degrees of rotation or more; a judge for amplitude (the height the rider attains above the lip of the halfpipe); and one for an overall score who judges originality, style and creativity. Each judge awards points out of a total of 10. The best score out of two runs counts in most formats (as opposed to FIS rules that will count the best two out of three runs this upcoming year).
Under the new format laid out at the conference, IJC judges are required to participate in practice sessions in order to understand new tricks riders might be performing and to assess, in advance, the likely skill range of competitors (which then allows a reasonable points spread to be established).
But competitors are not required to perform any set routine or even notify judges of the tricks they might be attempting. In fact, riders often don’t know what trick they’ll do until seconds before execution. Even in the new manual, degrees of difficulty for established tricks have been deliberately omitted. Assessing the comparative difficulty of tricks, with their numerous elements, directions and grabs, often comes down to the personal preference of head judges. This is not unreasonable. In many sports referees have specific styles. But basic issues such as the number of points deducted for a fall have to be balanced against those like a rider aiming for more advanced tricks with no benchmark yet established.
Furthermore, there is no definitive standard for each trick. This is largely because none of the leaders in the embryonic world of judging has had the time or resources to find and assemble video footage of perfect execution of the dozens of tricks and their variations.
According to Jay Erickson, tour director for the International Snowboard Federation, (ISF), one of the sport’s sanctioning bodies with events such as the World and Junior World Championships, “Sports such as gymnastics, diving or ice skating with highly formalized executions have had generations to figure out how to judge what are basically far simpler and far fewer tricks. Snowboarding has had 15 years. And every year top athletes perform at least 10 new tricks that have never been seen before. Tricks that only three or four years ago made riders such as Terje Haakonsen the world’s best are now commonplace. This reflects growing athleticism. A few years ago it was inconceivable that competitors would be getting over 10 feet of air. Now 15 feet is common even in practice sessions.” (Erickson adds he was at the conference primarily as an observer and refuses to sit for the certification exam “or every time they are a judge short I’ll get roped in.”)
Even though the 30 attendees at the certification conference are among the most experienced snowboard judges in North America, the difficulties of judging were made evident from the first moment they were asked to watch a video of a halfpipe and big air competition. This instantly produced a marked diversity of strongly-held opinion. In fact, all but about a half dozen of the most experienced judges had difficulty identifying every single trick with certainty.
This makes the skills of those who can identify tricks all the more important to the educational mission. For example, Jay Moore, one of the IJC pro-judge trainers and a retailer from Bozeman, Mont., has been snowboarding 16 years and judging for six, including stints as head judge at four major international events in the U.S., Europe and Japan during the last year. Utilizing a skill that seems akin to sight-reading music, he can simply look at a complex trick performed in a split second and not only identify it but also compare it to a similar trick by a rider several runs earlier. But Moore, now 36, started skateboarding in southern California at age seven and spent much of his teenage years in the company of the world elite skateboarders such as Tony Hawk and Andy MacDonald. They developed the tricks that now form a substantial part of the snowboard trick catalogue.
But as judges like Moore are forced by family and business responsibilities to scale back the number of events they judge each year, there is a legitimate question as to whether the rising brigade of younger judges attending the conference is ready to step in. A few years ago snowboarding’s notoriously poor judging was simply another frustration of poorly organized events. But currently, 75 percent trick recognition doesn’t seem sufficient if the first prize at a top snowboard contest can mean a year’s salary and a new truck, while third place might barely cover a rider’s expenses. (While almost heretical to suggest, at some stage the IJC will have to contemplate the many benefits of video replay.)
But increasing both the number and quality of snowboard judges is part of the IJC’s mission. No one can reasonably expect competitive snowboarding to have evolved at the speed it has and not have some shortcomings. And the recent conference can be seen as one of the initial steps in what will inevitably prove to be a long process.
Greg Johnson, head Olympic snowboard judge and one of the forces behind setting up the IJC, points out that it is highly unlikely a judge will be promoted to a high pro-level without at least five years of judging regional competitions where the tricks are far simpler.
“As long as we have a group of judges proficient at the highest standard and others rising steadily through the system, then we can be prepared,” he says.
“But that is what makes the educational component so important. Many of the judges here this week may not be judging the very top events for some time. But each of them can now go back with an agreed-upon system and with training materials and even a classroom teaching format that they can use to train regional judges for their local competition series.”
By the end of this year, around 110 judges in the U.S., Europe and Japan will be certified at different IJC levels. In fact, the slim judges manual, which for the first time outlines almost every aspect of holding and judging a snowboard event, is remarkably simple. It includes responsibilities and duties of judges, dispute resolution and a rundown of various rules. An appendix defines the tricks and grabs commonly used by snowboarders. Questions such as reruns, dqs and timing of events are also covered. The impression is of a document that has been successfully edited down as agreement has been reached, rather than one expanded to include growing number of complexities. “Ultimately what has emerged is what the world’s top riders want in competition,” says Johnson. “Riders now assume judges will be impartial even if not always totally accurate. But what they have wanted all along is a competition format which allows them to show themselves in the best light.”
Included in the new system are competition formats of seeded heats with top seeds going first, which ensures top riders can ride a pipe in top condition and don’t have to wait hours for their run. Another rider demand that is catered to is a throw-away run, which allows a rider to be more aggressive and less concerned about falls. Riders also like modified jam formats, such as the U.S. Open, where many riders are in the pipe at one time during qualifying and the best are allowed to advance. The qualifiers then have a set time to complete as many runs as they like with the best two plus an average of the rest counting toward their score. With these sorts of formats available, each with many permutations, IJC claims to be able to offer ideal events for the terrain, the skill levels of the riders and the wishes of the competition organizers.
Three big events will use the new IJC formats early in the season and then they will be reassessed for minor improvements before the World Championships in Telluride in December. “Unfortunately, the FIS doesn’t get any feedback on how to improve because they only have three people that make all their snowboard decisions and no top riders at any of their competitions,” says Johnson. “They are intent on fitting snowboarding rigidly into their experience with skiing, regardless of the fact the entire snowboard world wants something different.”
Any outsider would roll his or her eyes at just how childish the conflict with the FIS appears. This is underlined by the fact that the USSA, the national member body of the FIS, recognizes IJC certification, while its theoretically controlling parent seems to sink ever deeper into denial by not doing so.
The result of the conflict is that almost every judge of any standing worldwide has switched to IJC certification, leaving the FIS events scrambling with barely one rotation of qualified judges. A FIS judge’s conference held at Whistler, B.C., in August had only one U.S. judge enrolled. Perhaps worse, many riders want nothing to do with FIS competition. Most European riders including German Olympic gold medalist Nicola Throst now boycott all FIS events and its Continental Cup events seldom attract more than 10 riders. The single FIS world cup event in the U.S. held last year at Park City, attracted only 18 men riders. By most estimates, the FIS world champion Ricky Bower would struggle to break into the world’s top 50 riders.
The USSA is in a minor bind. Although U.S. riders are less politically minded than their euro-counterparts and will take part in better USSA events, USSA must rely on IJC judges if its Grand Prix events are to be successful and has even signed a contract with the IJC. And although the IJC is just as eager to support the USSA events, there is still no mechanism whereby the FIS will allow IJC judges at what are ultimately its sanctioned events.
“Ideally we can influence FIS policy through being active in the USSA,” says Maria McNulty, IJC legal-eagle, who is currently waiting to see if her nomination as USSA judge’s rep to the FIS is accepted or shot down due to her close IJC link.
Word is that immediately after the recent conference, USSA strongly recommended to the FIS that they accept IJC pro level 3 certification as the equivalent of FIS B level. But even if this were accepted, top IJC judges would still be required to sit for FIS certification tests for Olympic and FIS World Cup events.
“Almost all judges will refuse,” says Greg Johnson. “Why should the world’s top judges jump through hoops for a body they have no reason to respect and that offers them and the sport nothing in return? Frankly, we are also concerned they will simply take all the work we have done and then try and do it all in-house. They are a very controlling type of organization.”
Other fundamental differences between the snowboard world and the FIS revolve around the FIS’s determination to make all wintersports conform to the professional structure of skiing. For example, the very idea of a U.S. snowboard team with a single sponsor, group training and team uniforms is anathema to snowboard athletes and their sponsors. Snowboarding is far closer to golf or tennis where athletes compete on an individual basis and sign individual sponsorship agreements and then come together occasionally for team events.
But assuming the USSA does find a way to recognize and use IJC judges and its judging format for USSA grand prix events, there is an obvious question: Does the FIS matter?
With numerous other top level events such as the ISF’s four Master World Cups and World Championships, the X Games and now NBC’s Gravity Games, the U.S. Open, the Westbeach Classic, plus frequent invitational events, snowboarding appears to have made an end run around the world’s governing body.
“The problem is the Olympics are the most public of events and snowboarding is likely to be presented in the worst possible light,” says Johnson. “The riders won’t be the best, the judging second rate and the format one which has been shown to be inferior.” But ironically, even if the FIS suddenly decides to defer to the IJC, there is little certainty that Olympic snowboarding will be free of controversy in Salt Lake City. The situation is still fluid, but so far there is no specific person in charge of snowboard events on the Salt Lake Organizing Committee, which instead relies on Park City’s ski-orientated race director for input. After ongoing problems with the design and location of the halfpipe, a solution has been found, but it entails extensive additional excavation work. And SLOC recently voted to include additional cross country and skeleton (a form of luge) events instead of boardercross, the most watched and telegenic of snowboard competitions.
Clearly the wintersports establishment is still some way from relinquishing their assumption that snowboarding remains an off-shoot of competitive skiing. But perhaps snowboarding should be thankful. In many ways it is the failure of the establishment to listen to the snowboard constituency that has led to snowboarding cleaning up its internal problems, and then forging its own individual competitive identity.
