Mixed team SBX event added to Beijing 2022 Olympic programme
Aug 31, 2018·Snowboard Cross
Today the IOC Executive Board meeting in Lausanne (SUI) has announced that seven new competitions will join the Winter Olympic programme for Beijing 2022, five of which are in the FIS disciplines.
The new FIS competitions confirmed to join the Beijing 2022 Olympic Winter Games are:
Ski Jumping - mixed team
Freestyle Skiing - mixed team aerials
Freeski - big air (men’s and ladies’)
Snowboard - mixed team snowboard cross
The team snowboard cross event made its World Cup debut back in the 2012/13 competition season at select stops on the SBX tour, and quickly established itself as a legitimate and legitimately thrilling variation on the already hugely popular snowboard cross event.
As with standard four-aside snowboard cross events, the team competition works in a knockout bracket format, with four teams racing head-to-head in heats and the top two teams from each heat making their way forward towards the eventual big final.
Unlike a standard snowboard cross event, the team event functions as a two-competitor-per-team relay, with the second member of the team released from the start gate as soon as the first member of their team has crossed the finish line. The first team to have both competitors across the finish line in the big final is, of course, the winner.
Men's team SBX season finale in Moscow
Up until this point, the team SBX event has featured separate teams for men’s and ladies’ competitions. That will now change as we move towards the “mixed” format’s inclusion in the Beijing 2022 Games, which will feature one men’s competitor and one ladies’ competitor per team. Fans can now expect the mixed team competition format to figure prominently in World Cup events over the coming seasons.
With the addition of the mixed team event, the Beijing 2022 Olympic Winter Games will now feature 11 snowboard competitions in total.
In other Olympic snowboard news, the FIS Congress 2018 has also proposed that Snowboard alpine mixed team parallel event and Snowboard parallel slalom be considered for addition to the Olympic programme, though these events will not be included for Beijing 2022.
The 15-member IOC Executive Board is meeting from 18th to 20th July with a full agenda, including the Winter Olympic Programme as one of the main topics. FIS President Gian Franco Kasper was present in his capacity as the representative of the Association of International Olympic Winter Sports Federations (AIOWF).
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