The first official Para snowboarding competition was held in 2000 in Waterville Valley, New Hampshire. It would take many more years for snowboarding to become a Paralympic sport, however. A group of snowboarders started campaigning for its inclusion at the Paralympic Winter Games in 2005. Their hard work paid off nine years later when snowboarding made its Paralympic debut at Sochi in 2014.
There were just two medal events at the 2014 Games: lower-limb impairment classifications for men and women in snowboard cross. Bibian Mentel-Spee from the Netherlands won gold for the women, while Team USA’s Evan Strong led a U.S. podium sweep for the men. The inclusion of Para snowboarding was such a success that eight more medal events were added for the 2018 Winter Games in PyeongChang.
The Americans dominated the competition, winning five gold medals and 13 total medals, almost tripling the next-closest country (the Netherlands with five). Team USA has won 17 total medals over the two Games, while the Netherlands is the only other country with more than two, boasting six.
There are two snowboarding events at the Paralympics: snowboard cross and banked slalom. Both are a race to see who can cross the finish line first, but each features a different way of getting there. The snowboard cross course features jumps, banked turns and drops, as four riders race at a time. The final race is a head-to-head battle to decide who gets gold or silver. Banked slalom is exactly what it sounds like, a time trial event that features heavily banked turns.
These events are contested at three different categories based on each athlete’s functional ability — SB-LL1 and SB-LL2 for lower-limb impaired athletes, and SB-UL for upper-limb impaired athletes. However, the SB-LL1 classification has been cut from the women’s side, eliminating two medal events that were featured in PyeongChang. This means there will be eight total medal events in Beijing, six for men and two for women.
All snowboarding events will be held at the Genting Snow Park in the Zhangjiakou zone, a popular ski destination about 110 miles northwest of Beijing.
Updated on February 13, 2022. For more information, contact the sport press officer here.