Japan's surge on the Olympic halfpipe leaves the US with some catching up to do

LIVIGNO, Italy — A generation ago, the sight of an Olympic halfpipe podium drenched in red, white and blue was as common as fresh powder on the mountain — a fitting and expected celebration for a sport born and raised in the United States.

A look at those podiums over the past decade tells a different story.

With Shaun White now in retirement, America's other great champion, Chloe Kim, is the only remaining U.S. snowboarder at these Winter Olympics favored to win a halfpipe medal in the contests that start with qualifying Wednesday.

The rest of the top contenders are from Japan, which boasts defending champion Ayumu Hirano and this year's second-ranked rider, Yuto Totsuka, with Australia's Scotty James and a few others sprinkled in from other spots in Asia and even New Zealand.

It's a generational shift borne from the confluence of several factors — namely, Japan's doubling down of both resources and athletes in snowboarding's most iconic event set against an alarming reduction in the number of actual halfpipes to ride across America.

These days, industry experts say there are a half-dozen or fewer halfpipes spread across American resorts. White said his last conversation with Hirano brought home the investment Japan has made in dry-slope training grounds, expensive air bags and, maybe, most importantly, time and talent.

“It's like, 'OK, so you're dropping triple-14s in a tank top while everyone else is waiting for the snow to hit in some part of the world,'" White said of the Japanese champion's summertime training regimen. “I don't know what would've happened if I had been able to train year-round in snowboarding.”

Halfpipes becoming less common in the US

Kelly Clark, the 2002 Olympic champion, grew up in the heart of the Green Mountains in Vermont. Her path to shredding on a halfpipe began at a little resort called Mount Snow.

These days, halfpipes are rare, if nonexistent, on the East Coast, which was also the training ground for Ross Powers and Danny Kass — two of the three members of the Olympic men's halfpipe sweep that officially put this sport on the map at the Salt Lake City Games in 2002.

In 2014, slopestyle joined the Olympic program. The growing popularity of that form of riding, with its less-intimidating rails and jumps, played into what resorts are willing to invest in. It’s easier and less expensive to carve out a gentle jump or place piping on a mountain than to dig out a 22-foot steep halfpipe, which takes far more advanced skills to construct — and ride.

“If I were looking 15 years down the road at halfpipe and how common that will be at a resort, then, that I would say could be a little concerning,” Clark said. “Will it be that relatable sport that everyone can kind of watch, and participate in?”

Shannon Dunn-Downing, the 1998 bronze medalist, wrote a recent editorial in Slush Magazine titled "Is Halfpipe Dead?"

“If it’s not cut well, nobody’s gonna ride it,” she said in an interview. “Then it’s going to kind of sit there empty, and ski resorts see that, and they don’t put the effort in if they don’t understand the value of having a halfpipe in the first place.”

Fewer halfpipes means a shrinking pipeline for up-and-coming US snowboarders

When their sport was dragged reluctantly into the Olympic fold in 1998, most of the best riders were essentially self-taught or privately coached, some of them starting on handmade quarterpipes that they and their friends took days to dig out.

Those who got good would look for funding — and the training access on better halfpipes that it afforded — from the Burtons and Red Bulls of the world in an ecosystem that thrived on product placement and dropping from helicopters for cool backcountry videos.

The U.S. Ski Association eventually became U.S. Ski & Snowboard, though it took decades for the snowboarders to start being treated more equitably. Four years ago, an Associated Press story detailed some of the dissatisfaction American snowboarders felt inside a Euro-centric system that favors skiing.

This came even though snowboarders have amassed 31 medals for the U.S. between 1998 and 2018, compared to 21 for the Alpine skiers over that period.

Rick Bower, who was elevated to director of the USSA snowboard program, detailed initiatives to support snowboarding that are starting to even things out — including an endowment potentially worth more than $65 million.

The goal is for the U.S. to dominate on the halfpipe when the Olympics return to Salt Lake City in 2034.

“For a long period, our sports were doing great and they were, like, ‘Hey, we’ll just let them do their thing,’” Bower said. “Because of that, we're now in a position where we’re behind and we need to do some catch-up.”

Japan saw an opportunity and invested in being the best

Meanwhile, Japan's pipeline comes at people in waves. Bower said that for decades, Japan would send teams of riders to America to train. More recently, it's dozens of riders with multiple coaches heading to Switzerland for camps.

“It's an army," Bower said. “It's 30 developmental athletes, all of whom are very skilled.”

Among the most telling statistics is that from 2002 through 2010, the U.S. won 12 of the 18 available halfpipe medals at the Olympics. Japan: None.

In the three Olympics since, the U.S. has won six of 18, but only one of nine (White's in 2018) on the men's side. Japan has won five, four of those in men's.

The trend is moving beyond the halfpipe. In the two big air events held so far at the Milan Cortina Games, Japan has captured three of the six medals. The U.S. produced a total of one finalist, no medals.

The bronze medalist in men's big air, Su Yiming, is from China, where participation in action sports is skyrocketing. But he trains in Japan under a Japanese coach who has an airbag.

“It just makes everything safer and you can learn a new trick a whole lot quicker,” Su said.

Zach Nigro, the senior director of sports marketing for Burton, says halfpipe's reputation as the most dangerous discipline in the sport could be part of the appeal in Japan.

“I think there are more Japanese riders who say, ‘Oh my God, I could be part of that,’” Nigro said. “They have a lot of honor. Their thought might be, it's a difficult discipline, but if you're going to be the best, then master the most difficult discipline.”

When the halfpipe finals roll around Thursday for the women and Friday for the men, Hirano, Totsuka and Ruka Hirano (not related to Ayumu) are among the Japanese candidates for the podium. So is Scotty James, the Aussie rider with eight career titles at the X Games and silver and bronze medals from the Olympics.

Where the first part of the 31-year-old James' career was spent chasing White, the second part involves holding off or catching the Japanese.

“They have a group team camaraderie, they push each other and they've built kind of a force,” James said. “They're hard to compete against. It's their composition on the board, their bodies. They're just very good at snowboarding. You put them on it and they're like one with it.”