The FIS Snowboard, Freestyle and Freeski Committee recently held a virtual meeting where members reflected on last season and discussed various potential refinements to events.

Among the changes being considered for slopestyle are to hold the women’s and men’s finals on separate days, reduce the number of athletes in finals and "standardise and shorten the duration of events with two-run finals."

"In some key respects our competition presentation needs to change," a statement from FIS read.

"While our events feature the most spectacular action on snow and carry plenty of cool cachet, long programme run-times and breaks between action mean viewers don’t stay engaged - especially for slopestyle events.

"Intent is to work on solutions to these problems beginning immediately in 2021-2022."

The FIS said the next season’s calendar "looks strong at this point" but admitted several nations had expressed concerns over the decreasing number of athletes and events for halfpipe.

It was proposed by Julie Steggall, high performance director for Freestyle Canada, to establish a working group to "look for tools and systems to allow halfpipe to grow again."

Last season’s World Cups in snowboard and freestyle were held against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The FIS confirmed there were just eight positive cases of coronavirus among athletes and staff out of 6,000 tests administered at events.

"Despite the enormous challenges presented this past season, we saw a remarkable commitment from our organisers, athletes, teams and FIS staff both on the ground and in the office, working together to follow the guidelines in order to have a safe and successful season," said the FIS.

"Unfortunately, our calendars were the most heavily impacted of any under the snowboard, freestyle and freeski umbrella, with more than half the season’s events cancelled.

"Still, when one considers that park and pipe events were the only ones that required intercontinental travel in 2020-2021 and the huge successes we saw at the events that were held, there’s plenty of positives to take away from last season."

The FIS confirmed there was a continued trend of lower rates of injury through last season but said it would look to "refine and improve course design and safety measures."

It also reported that there were "significantly" less injuries amongst younger athletes.

Skiers and snowboarders are gearing up for the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympic Games which are scheduled to run from February 4 to 20.

The FIS said there was a new proposal to extend the calculation period of results to qualify for the Games.

"Proposal will extend the qualification period backwards to 2019-2020, with the best five results considered for halfpipe, the best four results for big air, and the best six results for slopestyle, for both freeski and snowboard athletes," the FIS added.