Industry News
When it comes to statistics in sports, team sports like baseball and football often come to mind, but Shaun White’s new Snow League is looking to make stats the norm in competition snowboarding. In late July, roughly five months after the first competition in Aspen, Colorado, the Snow League released statistics from its inaugural event via an Instagram post, featuring statistics derived from thousands of raw data points from categories like grab type, amplitude, and degrees of rotation. In a sport where statistics often go unconsidered, the Snow League is making an effort to match mainstream sports in the realm of data analytics.
“We took thousands of data points from Event One and turned it into something a bit more digestible. With all this event data, we can analyze just about anything from inside the halfpipe,” the Snow League wrote in a post on its Instagram account.
The data reveals that both Indy and Mute grabs were used the most throughout the competition, coming in at 32.1% and 23.7%, respectively. Grabbing Bloody Dracula, which is grabbing the tail of a snowboard with both hands, was an extremely challenging grab which was only used in 0.3% of the tricks. Looking at amplitude, the riders went the biggest in the final round, averaging 12.6 feet of amplitude out of the halfpipe. This was followed by the last chance qualifier round, which saw an average of 12.3 feet of amplitude. The data also shows that women’s halfpipe snowboarders are going big, with 360s making up only 2% of spins. 540s and 720s were the most popular, both coming in at 27%, while 7% of the tricks thrown were 1080s, which is four full rotations in a single hit.
Ultimately, Japanese riders Yuto Totsuka took home gold for the men’s discipline and Sena Tomita for the women’s. Both won $50,000 in first place winnings, with the total prize purse that came up to $370,000.
This data could prove to be very important as the Snow League continues to mature moving into its second winter season. It will help fans better understand snowboarding and what tricks the riders choose to do in certain situations. It will also help the riders examine their competitors and improve their own riding. This could also impact judging, as judges could reward higher scores to tricks that are not as utilized.
Despite the many positives that could potentially arise with the frequent use of data analytics in snowboarding, there are many people out there who believe that this kind of information does not belong in the sport. The fear is that this kind of analytical information could ruin the most fundamental aspect of snowboarding: style.
Love it or hate it, Shaun White’s ground-breaking new event is undoubtedly making noise in the world of snowboarding. Fan engagement long been an issue in the world of snowboarding, and by using statistics as a means of attracting a newer audience, the Snow League could someday compete with the likes of today’s mainstream sports.
