Women's Olympic Halfpipe Guide

The Women's Olympic Halfpipe competition takes place today. Here is our guide to the competition.

The Event

Thursday February 18 at Cypress Mountain
For each round the competitors will get 2 runs. Their best score will count for that round. After the first run,  the order of competitors will shuffle so that the riders with the lowest scores will go first. The rider with the highest score in the first run will take their second run last.

• Qualifiers - 12:30 PT
  30 women will compete in qualifiers. The top 6 riders will go directly to the finals.  The next 12 finishers will move on to compete in the semifinals.
• Semifinals - 4:00 PT
  The top 6 in the semifinals will advance to the finals.
• Finals - 6:00 PT
  The 6 riders that advanced from the semifinals will join the 6 riders that advanced from the qualifiers to compete for medals.
   

If you are unable to watch the competition live in your country we have been successful in finding live feeds on various websites.

The Players

• Gretchen Bleiler (USA)
  Gretchen is known for difficult tricks like the crippler. She was the Silver medallist in Torin, but is coming off winning X-Games Gold and hungry for more in Vancouver.
• Torah Bright (Australia)
  Torah is the most technical rider in women's snowboarding. When she's on she can be hard to beat, but because some of her tricks are difficult she has been known to crash.  Bright pulled out of the X-Games after a fall in practice. Rumor is that she might have a double cork crippler. If Torah can put one down in a clean run, this competition might be over.
• Kjersti Buass (Norway)
  Kjersti comes into the Olympics with few expectations, despite being the defending Bronze Medallist. Still, she has the ability to throw down big runs and could be a dark horse in the competition.
• Kelly Clark (USA)
  Kelly has been dominating women's competition this season with her signature big airs and clean tricks. The only major event she didn't win was the X-Games and she still managed Silver.  Kelly won gold in the Salt Lake City games, but was unable to defend her medal in Torino after falling on the last hit of what arguably had been the best run ever in women's competition. Clark is coming into this games with a ton of confidence and hunger for gold.
• Elena Hight (USA)
  Elena is back in her second Olympics. She doesn't have the big wins of the other American women, but she was the first woman to land a 900 in competition and has the bag of tricks it will take to podium
• Liu Jiayu (China)
  This Chinese teenager has won the World Championships and World Cups. She beat out both Kelly Clark and Gretchen Bleiler in the World Cup opener in Australia last August.
• Hannah Teter (USA)
  Teter is the defending gold medallist. She hasn't been as dominant this season as in past ones, pulling out of some competitions due to injuries. Hannah is able to shake off pressure and throw down a good run when she needs to. With her big air and bag of tricks, she is still a threat to defend her gold medal.

The Questions

There are some big questions that will need to be answered in competition

• Will Torah Bright try a double cork?
• Can the American women sweep the podium?
• Will China topple the American women's halfpipe dominance?
• Who will be the darkhorse?
• How is the halfpipe?
• Will the riders be tired from 3 rounds of competition taking place in one day?
• How big an advantage will riders advancing directly from the finals from qualifiers have?

Follow us on twitter at http://www.twitter.com/powderroom_lv as we will be tweeting live as the action goes down.