Judging

By definition, the term freeride is contradictory to the word competition. Some riders refuse to enter contests because of this definitional clash or simply would prefer to not be judged.
Though for some riders, freeride and competition fit together. They wish to compare themselves to other riders from time to time and have someone decide who produces the best show.
Therefore, we need judges.

When it comes to freeriding, we all know that there is different terrain and different ways to express oneself within this terrain. The goal of this judging system is to allow any style of riding to win on any given day. Whether a rider’s strength is steep terrain, big airs, technical tricks or speed, each style
should be able to win if on that day, the rider simply showed the most impressive run utilizing his own strengths.

Riders shouldn’t have to adapt their riding to a system; the system should be adaptable to the riding.
So how can we create a judging system that is both fair and not restrictive?
Freeriding encounters the same dilemma as other disciplines such as surfing, skateboarding or freestyle skiing/snowboarding have. These respective sports have all gone through their own distinct experiences and it is interesting to see that they all ended up with similar judging systems. Systems with overall impression scores, given mostly by former riders respected by the new active generation, based essentially on emotions rather than mechanical descriptions.

Overall Impression
In the past, we tried to have scores for each criteria, (line, fluidity, control, jumps). We either had one judge per criteria or each judge was giving points for each criteria. Points were added together to make a final score. There are multiple reasons why we are using overall impression.

1. With criteria judges, it is much harder for the head judge to keep each judge utilizing the full scale of judging criteria. If the fluidity judge would score all the riders between 4 and 7 and the jump judge between 2 and 9, the jump judge would have a much bigger influence on the final result. The idea of multiple judges is to average the scores in order to be as fair as possible.

2. When judges were each judging all the criteria, the same situation would occur. One criteria would take too much value because it is easier to use the full scale on jumps than it is for control, fluidity or line. It made it difficult for someone riding steep and fast but with hardly any jumps to score well.

3. The fact is, the criteria are linked together. Splitting these elements is more confusing than convenient. A judge has to ask himself at all times how fast, how big and how in control a rider is compared to how steep, how exposed and in what snow conditions the action is happening to make up his mind. A split criteria structured mind is key to good overall impression judging.

Download the Official FWT Judging Manuel