ABSTRACT
Key Performance Variables (KPVs). Unlike more traditional sports such as swimming, running, and cycling, very little is known about the characteristics of half-pipe snowboarding’s elite athletes or the physiological and kinematical demands of competition. Sport scientists from the Australian Institute of Sport (AIS) have recently undertaken a preliminary video based analysis of the effect sport specific key performance variables (KPVs) such as total air-time (TAT) and average degree of rotation (ADR), have on scores during elite half-pipe snowboard competition. This analysis has shown that when TAT and ADR are combined (multiple linear regression), they show a strong correlation with an athlete’s subjectively judged score (r 0.70), and subsequently account for approximately 50% of the shared
variance associated with the overall score (r2 0.49, SEE 4.04) during Fédération Internationale de Ski (FIS) Half-Pipe Snowboard Competition Finals (n 2) in Bardonecchia Italy, February 2005 (Harding et al., 2005; Harding et al., 2006).
