LONDON: The newest Olympic sport should prove to be a crowd-pleaser straight away.

Big air snowboarding makes its Olympic debut in Pyeongchang, bringing tricks, thrills and danger to the slopes.

Big air has been an FIS Snowboarding World Championship event since 2003 and has been at the X Games for far long, yet 2018 will marks its entry onto the Olympic stage.

The event is the extreme version of slopestyle, an Olympic discipline that itself only debuted in 2014.

Athletes send themselves down one huge ramp and look to perform the highest-scoring individual trick possible. Pyeongchang will have the world’s biggest big air ramp standing at 49 meters with a maximum slope angle of 40 degrees, giving athletes more time in the air to show off their latest tricks.

Many of the snowboarders who compete in the slopestyle will also try their hand at the big air event, giving them two chances at clinching an Olympic medal.

Canadian pair Mark McMorris and Max Parrot are widely touted as the favorites in the men’s competition.

Reuters