As discussed in the Feb 12 thread, here's a separate thread to discuss the sport of slopestyle - who's favoured, what to watch for, what the tricks that are being described actually ARE, what judges are usually looking for and what they might be looking for now, Canadian odds, and so forth.
To start with, if you've never seen a ski slope comp before, here's a complete video of the finals from the X Games a few weeks ago.
FAQ
1. Who Are the Favourites?
The Americans are favoured to win this event, and podium. They have an extremely deep roster of talent, including Nick Goepper, who is the prohibitive favourite. Bobby Brown is also in the running. A strong dark horse candidate for gold is Henrik Harlaut of Sweden, who's known for his unique approach to slopestyle competitions (he's usually doing very different tricks than the other contenders). A decent bet to podium is Andreas Hatveit, who doesn't quite have the top level tricks the U.S. riders do, but is the most experienced guy in the field and one of the most consistent.
2. What about Canada?
Canada only sent one rider to men's ski slope, but he's a good one: Alex Beaulieu-Marchand, nicknamed ABM. He recently placed 2nd at one of the major competitions leading up to the olympics; here's his run:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uJmUWgPYBTw
He also has a triple in his bag of tricks, and is rumored to be one of maybe three guys with a switch triple. He's never done it in a competition, though.
3. What tricks should we be looking for?
Lots to talk about on the tricks side, and people are sure to have questions about them. But the main trick in slope skiing right now is the double or triple cork spins. A "cork" spin means that the rider is inverted - his skis are above his head. A "double cork" means that the skis go above the head twice, and in a "triple cork", three times. Only a handful of riders have landed triple corks in competition. This is much the same as snowboarding, which brings up a caveat - in order to win gold at X Games, you basically had to be able to land a triple. In snowboard slope, Mark McMorris and Max Parrot both had triples, and were both beaten by runs with no triples in them. So the judging here may be different.
4. What are the judges looking for?
The general judging criteria is summed up by the acronym "PAVED" - Progression, Amplitude, Variety, Execution and Difficulty. Progression refers to doing things that haven't been done before or doing them differently than they've been done in the past. Amplitude means going higher and further off the jumps. Variety means switching tricks up - you'll hear a lot about "left side" or "right side", depending on which way the rider is spinning, and the different grabs that are executed, as well as different tricks done on the rails. Execution is a matter of landing jumps clean and without wobbling, holding grabs for as long as possible, generally making the trick look good. And difficulty, obviously, refers to the difficulty of the trick - a double cork 1080 is harder than a cork 1080, a nose mute grab is harder than a safety grab.