A proposal to submit ski halfpipe to the International Olympic Committee for consideration as an Olympic sport as early as 2014 was approved without dissent at the International Ski Federations biennial FIS Congress on Friday 4^th June in Antalya, Turkey. The Congress also unanimously passed proposals to accept both snowboarding slopestyle and team snowboardcross into the FIS World Snowboard Championships.

While Olympic consideration for these two disciplines was not a part of the formal proposal, FIS will consider it as a potential future event.  Team snowboardcross is a format that has already been tested successfully on the World Cup and proven to be well received by the public and athletes.

This might be received as a sell out by some in the snowboarding camp. They have their Winter X games which was seen as an alternative to the Olympics, one that doesn’t carry with it all the corporate hype and red tape madness that’s part of the Olympic circus.

After snowboard half pipe was included in the Olympics and now it seems ski half pipe will follow, is it too much to think that slopestyle would remain sole property of Winter X?

I for one would welcome Ski halfpipe in to the Olympics and look forward to slopestyle joining too. Both are young, dynamic, highly skilled sports that take just as much dedication as any of the other alpine events. Just because the competitors can sometimes be seen plugging in their iPod’s just before ‘dropping in’ doesn’t mean that this isn’t a serious sport. Ooops, I’ve gone and used that word ‘serious.’