It has been revealed that the shaping of the halfpipe to be used in the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing has already begun. 

Days after the World Snowboard Tour’s flagship event was unable to hold the halfpipe competition due to a lack of proper pipe-cutting equipment, the decision was made to take every precaution to prevent the same thing happen again at the Genting Ski Resort in 2022.

“We’re not taking any chances” says Games co-ordinator Jin Hui Meng. “Fortunately, we were able to attain the services of several ‘volunteers’ who have committed to maintaining the halfpipe site for 18 hours a day until the Olympics.”

Despite the controversy, Jin was reluctant to criticise the organisers of the World Snowboard Tour’s event in Yabuli.

“They did a lot of stuff right – in slopestyle, for example. With the ‘rails followed by kickers’ format getting so stale in the last few years, it was refreshing to see them completely change the game by making it kickers followed by rails.”

He concluded by praising the WST World Championships as the perfect dry run for the Olympics, given that the vast majority of the snowboard world hadn’t been paying enough attention to realise that the pipe hadn’t gone ahead.