ESPN announced Tuesday that the first major action-sports contest since the COVID-19 pandemic started forcing major cancellations will take place during its usual slot in Aspen, Colorado, from Jan. 29-31, but will be closed off to fans.

Among those expected to compete are Chloe Kim, Mark McMorris and David Wise, all of whom have missed several events since cancellations scrubbed the late-winter calendar earlier in 2020. They now find themselves facing an uncertain international schedule with only 14 months to get ready for the Beijing Olympics.

“Obviously it’s been tough on everybody,” said Tim Reed, the ESPN executive who oversees the X Games. “No doubt the athletes are excited to get back out there.”

The first Winter X Games took place in 1997 in California, and the games have settled in Aspen since 2002. They have long been regarded as the most prestigious set of contests on the action-sports calendar, and their focus has shifted over time.

The event has mushroomed over the decades into a festival-like gathering that draws more than 110,000 fans to Aspen over the weekend. It features live bands, house and street parties.

To have any chance of putting on a show this winter, however, ESPN had to pass through a number of health-related regulatory hurdles to ensure county officials they would be running a safe, socially distanced event.

An event that has traditionally drawn more than 200 athletes will probably include about 90. A support staff that often numbers more than 1,000 will be cut in half. There are no plans to have spectators. Fans are urged to watch the action on ESPN, which owns and produces the event, and online.

“The safety is always the most critical aspect of this,” Reed said. “We really believe our events can be produced in a way that mitigates risks to all.”

As part of the Disney family, the X Games has learned a lot from experts, both in the health and TV production areas, from several different sports, including those who helped make the NBA’s bubble in Florida work.

In many ways, hosting a three-day outdoor event that doesn’t include any contact between the competitors is a less daunting task than, say, 10 weeks of NBA games.

Still, organizers are designing an intensive testing protocol and establishing safeguards for the 500-or-so competitors, coaches and staff who will be inside the snowboard bubble in Aspen.

After each contest, athlete accolades rained on the pipe builders, a three-man team that includes Copper Mountain snow sculptors Mark Pevny and Jake Ingle. Shaun White, Chloe Kim and David Wise all heralded the super-sized halfpipe that enabled them to win in what turned out to be America’s best gold mine of these Olympics.

“It really allowed the riders to put together a run that maybe they envisioned but haven’t been able to do,” said 33-year-old Pevny of Denver, who spends his winters building and maintaining the pipe at Copper Mountain. “We wanted to give them a platform that was a long enough, wide enough and steep enough pipe for them to be able to make these the best comps ever.”

Pevny, Ingle and their Austrian pipe-cutting partner Alli Zehetner spent more than a month at the Phoenix Park resort in South Korea’s mountainous PyeongChang County, directing a team of 70 Koreans in building the pipe. Zehetner, who built the slopestyle venue for the Sochi Olympics and is in charge of the parks at Austria’s Kitzsteinhorn resort, as well as several World Cup halfpipes, handled the cutting for the snowboard contests. Ingle was in charge of the pipe for the ski contests, captaining the GPS-guided PistenBully snow groomer mounted with the Swiss-made Zaugg pipe groomer known as the “Pipe Monster.” Pevny handled the grooming of the bottom of the pipe.

Their finesse at the controls of the machine was surgical. The slightest mistake — shaving too little, leaving too much on the walls, mulching the snow in the trough or rutting the transitions — could endanger athletes who launch 20-plus feet above the 22-foot walls. A few millimeters of over-vertical or under-vertical on the wall can alter a soaring body’s trajectory with dire consequences.

“Every second, we are thinking about perfection,” Zehetner said. “We know every inch of this halfpipe.”

“Sure, every snowflake was meticulously placed in the right place,” said a laughing Ingle, a Michigan resident who built Copper Mountain’s first halfpipe in the late 1990s and now travels the country building the Grand Prix halfpipes that host the world’s top skiers and snowboarders.

Colorado is the birthplace of the 22-foot Olympic-caliber halfpipe and now boasts one of the world’s highest concentrations of the superpipes at Buttermilk, Snowmass, Copper Mountain, Breckenridge and Vail. The technology for carving Olympic halfpipes came from Colorado. Farmer Doug Waugh crafted the first-ever pipe-carving machine in 1991, tweaking his farm machinery to create an arced arm of spinning augers and shovels that attached to a snowcat.  called his machine the Pipe Dragon, and it was used to carve halfpipes at the Nagano Games in 1998 and the Salt Lake City Olympics in 2002.

Zehetner is quick to say his team played only a role in the successes in the PyeongChang Olympic pipe. There were many other contributors, including good weather and athletes, ready to send it.

“The whole package needs to be when everything works together — to the athletes feeling it����ap their day when they get up in the morning and also the weather is a big part,” said the 41-year-old Zehetner. “We can influence one little part of it. Only when all these components come together, then it is an outcome like this.”

The trio made the pipe longer after Olympic test-event competitions last year. Athletes at those events asked them for extra space, so they added another 100 feet or so. It’s also steeper than most pipes, with a pitch of 18.3 degrees, compared with Copper’s pipe at 17.25 degrees and Mammoth’s at 18 degrees.

“This was, hands down, the very best pipe we have ever had built for us,” said U.S. Freeskiing halfpipe coach Ben Verge, whose athletes David Wise, Alex Ferreria and Brita Sigourney earned medals.

On most pipes, the highest-flying athletes quickly run out of room and can squeeze in only four hits. The Olympic pipe enabled five, even six hits.

“Since our guys are always working for more amplitude, the length is really nice to have for them,” said U.S. pipe coach Andy Woods.

Pevny, Ingle and Zehetner felt the pressure for perfection after the halfpipe debacle in Sochi four years ago, where a poorly maintained pipe did not enable high-level riding. That was not the case this time around.

“We were watching these guys build, build and build to this moment. So it was cool to see them have something where they could progress even more,” said Ingle, a snowboarder and a graduate of a ski area management program who was an intern at Copper Mountain in the late 1990s when he started building the resort����ap first halfpipe. “It����ap just cool to showcase the sport on the biggest stage possible and let the athletes do the runs they set out to do and push the sport.”

His favorite old-school singer always pumps up the 23-year-old freestyle skier from Aspen. His father always offers sage paternal advice.

“Don’t stink your pants. Don’t be like your father,” Marcelo Ferreira told his son. “Be classy. Touch the snow. Just execute.”

What����ap it like to watch a child spin and tumble and fly above the snow, with the world watching and an Olympic medal on the line?

As Alex Ferreira won a silver medal on a crisp, glorious Thursday in the Taebaek Mountains, I stood alongside his father in Phoenix Park, as Marcelo started the biggest party in South Korea. He laughed. He sang. He lived on a prayer. He borrowed a huge cowbell from a stranger from Switzerland. And after pumping up the volume past 10, Ferreira spontaneously recruited 50 students from an elementary school in Seoul and made them noisy cheerleaders.

“My friends tell me Aspen feels deserted. Nobody is on the street. Everybody is at home watching on TV,” Marcelo Ferreira said, as his son prepared to drop in the pipe for the first of three runs, “This is the day that could change his life. No pressure. Just execute.”

At age 58, he felt as giddy as a teenager. Marcelo Ferreira is from Argentina and was an accomplished soccer player that turned pro at age 17. So he knows something about Olympic-sized pressure.

“My first game as a pro, I was in the tunnel of a stadium in Buenos Aires. There were 50,000 people in the stands, and they all wanted to kill me,” Marcelo Ferreira recalled. “One of my teammates, our superstar, came up to me and said: ‘You stink.’ ”

It was not a comment on his skill, but his hygiene. Prior to the biggest athletic moment of his young life, Marcelo soiled himself. From that day forward, he vowed never to be nervous for any competition from the moment his cleats first touched the grass of a soccer pitch. Although the father of a skier capable of executing tricks as wild as the imagination dares to fly, Marcelo Ferreira does not know any of the double-cork, mute-grab lingo of the sport. So, before every halfpipe competition, his one piece of skiing advice is: “Touch the snow.”

No problem, Pops. Your kid soared like an eagle and stomped tricks like a boss. “I’m back, baby, I’m back!” Alex Ferreira declared, after flying atop the leader board with an amazing second run.

“Please,” Marcelo Ferreira begged, wrapping me in a bear hug and lifted me 2 feet off the ground after his kid scored 96.00 to take over first place midway through the competition. “If I get so nervous I need an ambulance, will you call one for me?”

At an Olympics where the locals have been golf-clap polite at events where no South Korean athletes were entered, Marcelo Ferreira was a pied-piper to kids from Sang Cheon Elementary School, up from Seoul on a field trip to the Winter Games. None of them knew Ferreira or Spanish until he demanded they learn the “Ole, Ole, Ole!” soccer song, with the refrain “Alex, Alex, Alex!” It was one of those happy, cross-cultural, buy-the-world-a-Coke moments that can make even a curmudgeon fall in love with the Olympics all over again.

At the outset of Round 3, American David Wise finally landed a run full of his gravity-defying shots up the elevator shaft. The judges rewarded him with a score of 97.20.

Alex Ferreira had one more shot to steal back gold, but would need the miracle of perfection, without a single wobble, to do it.

“We’ve got a medal. Now let����ap go get gold. We need a 99. And the birds have to take him to fly,” declared his father, praying aloud.

His son’s final run was a thing of beauty. One landing, however, was less than a perfect 10. After an agonizing wait, the scoreboard flashed the score: 96.40. Oh, so close. Fantastic. But silver, not gold.

Marcelo Ferreira squeezed the South Korean students a little closer to his chest, dropped his head in a brief moment of disappointment, then said: “Excuse me. But I think I need to go give his mom a hug now.”

A few minutes later, as Alex Ferreira bounced excitedly to the podium to accept congratulations and the white tiger stuffed animal that has become ubiquitous at the Games, U.S. flags waved and the arena sound systems blared an old rock song: “Livin’ on a Prayer.”

“Bon Jovi!” Marcelo Ferreira exclaimed.

I asked how it felt to be the father of a freshly minted silver medalist. Proud? Ecstatic? Delirious?

And I swear this is the first word that came out of Marcelo Ferreira’s mouth: “Exhausted.”

Way to Wise to the occasion! takes the lead with a 97.20 in the men's freeski halfpipe on his final run!

— NBC Olympics & Paralympics (@NBCOlympics)

Aspen skier Alex Ferreira added another medal to Team USA’s total after earning a silver medal in halfpipe skiing.

FIRE. ON. THE. HALFPIPE. Alex Ferreira got massive air to earn in the men's freeski halfpipe!

— NBC Olympics & Paralympics (@NBCOlympics)

New Zealand 16-year-old Nico Porteous, throwing the only six-hit runs and the only double-cork 1440, took bronze.

Nevada’s Wise stumbled on his first two laps, joining a coterie of climactic crashes in the carnage-filled contest as skiers pushed to showcase the highest level of pipe skiing on the world’s grandest stage.

Up top, about to drop for his final lap, Wise saw that a new standard for skiing had already been set.

“Freeskiing today won whether I landed my third run or not,” said Wise, who skied three different pairs of skis on his three laps after kicking a ski on his first two laps. “That kind of gave me a little boost.”

His back-to-back switch double-corks were staggeringly huge; a linking of two of the hardest tricks in ski pipe. Wise won gold in Sochi in 2014 in the first-ever Olympic running of halfpipe skiing. It was snowing hard that night and the Russian pipe was in bad shape. It was not a good debut for the sport. PyeongChang was much better.

“For me, this is the most satisfying competition I have ever had,” said Wise, whose wife, daughter and toddler son joined him in South Korea. “Just making the team after the hard couple of years between Sochi and here felt like a lifetime accomplishment. I feel like we got to put on the show that everybody missed out on in Sochi.”

Ferreira, 23, was the only skier in the 12-man final to stay on his feet while improving on each of his three runs, a consistency he credited to training. He boosted more than 20 feet out of the pipe on his hits, spinning five double-cork tricks in all three of his runs. As his dad, a former professional soccer player from Argentina, rattled a cowbell the size of a pasta pot and led a horde of local kids in the international “Ole” soccer anthem, Ferreira posted the highest scores in the first two laps of the three-run final. His third run was less than a point behind Wise’s 97.20.

“Victory lies within the preparation and I was prepared for this day and I worked extremely hard,” said Ferreira, who just missed the cut to make the first-ever Olympic pipe squad with his best friend Torin Yater-Wallace in 2014.

Sochi veterans Yater-Wallace of Basalt and Crested Butte’s Aaron Blunck struggled to stay clean in their runs on Thursday, with the top qualifiers finishing out of the podium hunt. Blunck finished 7th, the same spot his finished in Sochi four years ago.

It was a fiery throwdown, with several uncharacteristic bobbles by top skiers. Yater-Wallace slammed hard on his final run. France’s Kevin Rolland fell on all three of his first hits, a massive switch double cork. His French teammate Thomas Krief fell on his first run and dropped from the contest. New Zealand’s Byron Wells slammed in practice moments before the start of the contest and was hauled away in a sled. His brother Beau James Wells soared with technical and lofty tricks to finish fourth.

The Wells brothers’ Kiwi teammate, the spry Porteous, weaved four double-corks in a row into his first run for the first time in his life. For his second run, he linked five doubles in a row for yet another first in his career. His first hit, a tail-grabbed double-cork 1440, was one of the first-ever in a pipe contest. No question Thursday was the best ski performance in his life. The world will see plenty more from this kid. He is the future of pipe skiing, even though he rides without poles.

“I just had to go for it. You are at the Olympics. Why not take advantage of it and harness the adrenaline and really go for it,” said Porteous, whose bronze marked a landmark day for New Zealand.

Minutes before Porteous dropped in for his first run, New Zealand’s Zoi Sadowski-Synnott won bronze in the Olympic debut of women’s snowboard big air, ending New Zealand’s 26-year drought of Winter Games medals.

“That was an absolutely huge inspiration for me and really got me going for the day. I would say we broke the curse today,” Porteous said.

Despite the struggles of Blunck and Yater-Wallace, Wise said it was a good day for freeskiing, a sport that thrives in the U.S., where the world’s highest concentration of Olympic-caliber halfpipes fosters the next generation of aeronautical skiers.

“What is so impressive is the danger and risk involved in going that high and doing those tricks … the sport is just so beyond what we were doing,” said Jonny Moseley, the freeskiing pioneer who uncorked the sport����ap inverted spinning frenzy with his off-axis “dinner roll” in the 2002 Salt Lake City Olympic moguls contest, which the judges shunned. “Those runs by Alex and David Wise were the most impressive things I have ever seen in the halfpipe or freestyle ever.”

“She really cares. She cares about her athletes to the core and that����ap what is amazing about her,” Wise said.

Elana Chase is the secret weapon that has nourished the U.S. Ski Team’s halfpipe squad, a foursome of aeronautical warriors who have battled through personal and physical setbacks to reach the Olympics, where each are poised as top contenders for medals in Thursday’s final. Chase has coached all four at various points in their career. She fostered Wise through his early years as pro skier. She housed the teenage Aaron Blunck for two years while he honed his craft at Ski & Snowboard Club Vail. For more than a decade, she has been the coach for Torin Yater-Wallace and Alex Ferreira, whose personal and professional skills she has helped cultivate since they were waist-high rippers.

For just about every run down the halfpipe for the past decade, Chase has been there, bumping fists with Ferreira and Yater-Wallace the moment before they drop in. They’ve grown from upstarts to superstars.

“Having Elana up there is a special thing for Alex and I. Having that person that you know you work so well with and have had your whole entire life,” said Yater-Wallace, who qualified third behind Ferreira and Blunck in Tuesday’s qualifying contest, fueling hopes for an American sweep of the halfpipe podium. “It����ap amazing to have Elena right there giving Alex and I the best advice we could want and with her it����ap a lot less of her coming to us. It����ap us going to her and she’s always known that that����ap the way we work. Why would you not want the person you’ve worked with and done best your whole life with there for you?”

Blunck, Ferreira, Yater-Wallace and Wise are more than just extraordinary skiers. They deflect praise to each other. They are humble and grateful, often talking about the honor of representing their country and the blessing of skiing for a living. They maintain a keen focus on their sport, hoping their exceptional talents drive more skiers to the pipe. Yes, they battle each other but after more than a decade of halfpipe havoc, they remain loyal to each other. It����ap a rare interview where they don’t applaud one another.

“The reality is hanging out with these guys and watching them ski is humbling,” Wise said.

Ron Wallace, Torin’s dad, obviously taught his son well; he similarly deflected a compliment when hearing that his son inspires a stranger.

“That����ap all Torin. He made this all himself,” Wallace said.

The families of Yater-Wallace, Ferreira and Blunck are tight. They’ve been hanging together for more than a decade, just like their boys.

One thing they all emphasized at the start, just as their boys were landing sponsors and garnering international attention, said Torin’s mom, Stace Yater-Wallace, is “don’t get a big head.”

The boys listened. And alongside their hard-working, ski-town parents who sacrificed to elevate their boys’ talents, Chase, who has coached and trained more than two dozen of the world’s top skiers, can be credited in part with that humility and introspective approach Blunck, Ferreira and Yater-Wallace have.

As for Chase, she eschews the spotlight. She wants all the attention on her athletes.

“You should really ask them about this,” she said, responding to a question about her contributions to her enviable roster of star skiers, many of whom refer to her as their “secret weapon.”

“Elana is the best. I’ve never seen a better coach,” said Ferreira, an ever-smiling Aspen native who exudes gratitude.

Chase has always elevated personal development focusing on thankfulness ahead of athletic talent. Her coaching chorus? “Be a good person. As much as you are a good skier, you are going to be person a lot longer than you are a competitive skier,” she said. “There’s energy in how you put good things out to other people and you inspire them and they admire you and they put energy and support back into you. I think it����ap really how you are as a person more than a skier and what you put out there because it all comes back tenfold.”

She was talking as she carried her trademark snow blade skis to the lift to begin her shift in the halfpipe starting house before Tuesday’s qualifying contest. “The most important thing is recognizing your place in the universe,” she said. “This is sports and what does that really matter, but it inspires people. Especially when you do it through massive adversity and you learn how to fall down and get back up. That����ap what people connect with. Winners are forgotten tomorrow. Champions last a lifetime.”

There’s a trust between Chase and her students.

“I’m always in their corner and my only purpose is to help them. I have no other agenda and they know that,” she said. “They trust me, which is crazy when I think about it, but they trust me with their lives. So if I suggest something, they know it’s always in their best interest.”

Ferreira, 23, has worked with Chase since he was 12. Her influence, for Ferreira, reaches well beyond the halfpipe. He considers Chase his “second mother.”

“One minute we are working in the halfpipe and working on tricks and the next minute she’s teaching me about life stuff and how I can build my credit,” Ferreira said.

Chase said Ferreira is a role model for not just athletes, but coaches who can use his laborious ascent over a decade in the pipe as a bearing for greatness.

“Alex’s trajectory through this sport, from day one, with all his ups and downs, is exactly how you would want it to go as a coach. That����ap exactly who you want to reference when you are trying to get the next kid to step up to something or step up as a person,” Chase said. “Nice guys finish first. That����ap my hashtag. You can be the guy or girl who opens doors for people and helps old ladies across the street, but you better be fierce on the snow. And there’s no reason you can’t be both.”

Her skiers, she said, know who they are and they can see what they accomplish on this brightest of stages. But they have to ski for themselves. If they get distracted by rivals, coaches, parents, teammates, and, yes, even by country, they could lose that elusive edge that makes them ski at their very best.

“If you think about the magnitude of the Olympics and all that stuff, you are going to get yourself in a zone where you might not be skiing for the right reasons,” Chase said. “You gotta do it like you did when you were eight years old. You are skiing for you. You are skiing for your personal goals and you are skiing with a purpose.”

Many of the millions who tune in to Olympic action may be coming in cold, with no knowledge of the athletes, some of the terms used and even how some events are judged. (Style, really?) That’s where we come in.

We have gathered a one-stop guide, chock-full of knowledge you can use to impress your friends or just use to make sure you don’t miss athletes with Colorado ties. Keep this handy until the last medal is draped over an athlete’s neck that

Freestyle skiing is a catchall category of sorts for the non-Alpine, non-Nordic skiing events. Each discipline has a different history and they were added to the Olympics at various times.

Moguls were introduced in 1992, followed by aerials in 1994. At the 1998 Nagano Games, the U.S. dominated the two events, winning three out of four gold medals. But Americans wouldn’t win another freestyle gold until 2010 (Hannah Kearney, women’s moguls). That’s also the year ski cross was added. The final two freestyle events, halfpipe and slopestyle, debuted in Sochi, where the U.S. took home seven medals (3 gold).

Q: What are the events? Where are they held?

Men and women compete in five events each (halfpipe, slopestyle, aerials, moguls and ski cross) for a total of 10. All of the events are held at the Phoenix Snow Park (where most snowboarding events are also held).

A halfpipe is a U-shaped course carved into the hill (like a pipe split horizontally). Skiers traverse back and forth, doing multiple tricks on each side of the pipe’s 22-foot walls. Scores are determined by judges.

Halfpipe has both a qualification round, and a final round. The qualification round consists of two runs, with the best single run counting. Twelve riders (out of 30 total for men and 24 for women) make it to the final round. The finals consist of three runs (compared to two in Sochi), with the best single run again used to determine the winner.

Slopestyle was new to the Olympics in 2014. Skiers go through a terrain park like course, doing tricks off a mix of jumps and rails (in Pyeongchang there are three sections of each, six total) . Slopestyle consists of two-qualifying runs, and three-final runs. The best single run counts in qualification, with twelve riders making it to the finals (out of 30 total men, 24 women). The highest single run score in the finals, as determined by judges, wins. No scores carry over from qualifications.

In aerials, skiers go off very large, steep jumps. They perform a series of flips and twists in the air before landing. The sport is judged, and is made up of a qualifying round (two runs), and a knockout-style final round (three runs).

All 25 skiers (in both men’s and women’s competitions) participate in the first qualification run. The top six scores advance directly to the finals, with the remaining 19 competing in the second run of qualifying. The top-six from that join the first six in finals, for a total of 12 final jumpers.

The nine top-scorers make it out of the first finals run. In the second run, three more skiers are eliminated. The last finals run, known as the “super final,” pits six skiers against one another for gold. The top-score wins.

In moguls, skiers go down a steep slope with bumps (known as moguls), and jumps interspersed. The events consist of a qualification phase (two rounds) and a knockout-style finals phase (three rounds). Each ski run is judged and timed. Scores never carry over from a previous round.

All 30 skiers (in both the men’s and women’s events) participate in the first qualification round, and are ranked by their scores after one run. The top 10 advance directly to the finals, while the remaining 20 go to the second qualifying run. The top-10 from that qualifier also advance to the finals, for a total of 20 final skiers.

In the first finals round, each skier takes one run. The twelve top-scorers advance. The second round also consists of one run. The top-six (of the twelve) move on. In the third and last finals round, also known as the “super final,” six skiers vie for gold. The highest score wins.

Ski cross is very similar to snowboard cross, with multiple skiers racing at once on a course with many banked turns, jumps, rollers and other obstacles. This event is timed or head-to-head, so there’s no subjective judging.

Both the men’s and women’s events consists of a seeding round, and an elimination round. For seeding, each skier takes one run on the course. All 32 skiers (in each the men’s and women’s field) advance to the elimination phase. The seeding is used to create heats so that the fastest skiers won’t meet until later rounds. The first elimination round has eight heats of four skiers each. The top-two finishers in each advance. Same for the round of 16, the quarterfinals and semifinals. The final four skiers race each other for gold.

Q: How does the judging work?

Four of the five freestyle skiing disciplines are judged (the exception being ski cross). Each have different formats and criteria.

Halfpipe: Six judges award marks for height, difficulty, variety of tricks, execution and progression (new tricks or new sequences). The highest and lowest scores from each run are thrown out, and the remaining scores are averaged. Scores are out of 100.

Slopestyle has five judges. Their scores are averaged to get a final score (out of 100). All judges take into account amplitude (too little, or too much), variety, difficulty, execution and progression.

Aerials has five judges, who evaluate on three criteriair (2 points), form (5 points) and landing (3 points). The highest and lowest component scores are dropped, and the rest are added together (total of up to 30 points). That number is then multiplied by the jump’s difficulty level (up to 5 points), for a maximum total score of 150.

Each moguls run is scored based on two components: turns (five-judges) and air (two-judges). Speed is the third factor. Each is weighted differently in the final score, which is out of 100 points.

Turns account for 60 percent of the score. Each turn judge gives two different scores — one positive “turn” value and a negative “deductions” value. The turn component is evaluated on whether a skier stays in the fall line, carves their turns, absorbs and extend their legs between moguls, and keeps their upper body still. The maximum points possible is 20. Deductions are taken for stops, falls or touchdowns, and can subtract up to six points. The lowest and highest turn and deduction scores are dropped. The remaining ones are added together to get a total turns score (maximum of 60 points).

The two air judges evaluate based on form and difficulty. Form is relatively subjective, and operates on a 10 point scale. Those two scores are then averaged, and multiplied by the difficulty of the jump (each trick has an assigned difficulty level). The maximum air score is 20.

The speed score is based on the time it takes a skier to get down the course, compared to the theoretical pace time (determined by the length of the course). A maximum of twenty points is awarded here as well.

The final score is the sum of the turns, air and speed points (maximum of 100).

Q: Do they use poles?

Most do. Aerialists are the exception.

Q: Who to watch for?

The U.S. team is well poised for Pyeongchang, especially in halfpipe and slopestyle.

Two thirds of the slopestyle podium sweep in Sochi returns to the team. Both silver medalist Gus Kenworthy and bronze medalist Nick Goepper should again be medal threats. Kenworthy, who came out in 2015, will be one of Team USA’s two openly gay athletes. “I’m definitely, like, ‘the gay skier’ now,” he said . “I know that I took the step to come out publicly and decided to wear that badge proudly.” The U.S., led by Maggie Voisin and Sochi silver medalist Devin Logan , should contend in slopestyle as well.

In halfpipe, the men could very well sweep the podium. Reigning gold medalist David Wise and Olympic newcomer Alex Ferreira should both contend for gold. The women, led by defending gold medalist Maddie Bowman , are likely to win at least one medal, too. That said, the Canadians and French have strong halfpipe skiers (both men and women) as well.

In aerials and moguls, the Americans aren’t quite as experienced. The entire women’s moguls team, for instance, is comprised of first-time Olympians (perennial threat Hannah Kearney retired after Sochi). That said, Jaelin Kauf could contend for a moguls medal and Ashley Caldwell of Ashburn, in her third Olympics, is a favorite in aerials.

The United States has no entrants in ski cross. France, Sweden, Canada and others will vie for the podiums there.

Q: When is freestyle skiing contested, and how can I watch it on TV?

Moguls qualification begins the morning of Opening Ceremonies, and the final event is Feb. 23.

All events will air on NBC and NBCSN, but only two will be shown live. Here is a schedule of the finals, with television coverage in parentheses. (All times Eastern.) Competition is also available by live-streaming or on the NBC Sports app.

Feb. 11: Women’s moguls, 8:10 a.m. (NBC, 7-11 p.m.)

Feb. 12: Men’s moguls, 8:10 a.m. (NBCSN, 7-11 a.m.; NBC, 3-5 p.m.)

Feb. 16: Women’s aerials, 6:52 a.m. (NBC, 8 p.m.-midnight)

Feb. 16: Women’s slopestyle, 11:56 p.m. (NBC, 12:35-2 a.m.)

Feb. 18: Men’s slopestyle, 12:11 a.m. (NBC, 11:30 p.m. on Feb. 17-1:30 a.m. Feb. 18)

Feb. 18: Men’s aerials, 6:52 a.m. (NBCSN, 10:15 a.m.-1 p.m.; NBC, 3-6 p.m.; NBCSN, 10:15 p.m.-1:30 a.m.)

Feb. 19: Women’s halfpipe, 9:18 p.m. (NBC, 8-11:30 p.m., live)

Feb. 21: Men’s ski cross, 12:35 a.m. (NBC, 12:05-1 a.m.)

Feb. 21: Men’s halfpipe, 10:22 p.m. (NBC, 8-11 p.m., live)

Feb. 23: Women’s ski cross, 12:35 a.m. (NBC, 12:35-2 a.m.)

He was 12, maybe 13. His pal Torin Yater-Wallace, who he’s been skiing with since he was 3, urged him to try skiing in the halfpipe. Yater-Wallace’s mom was there with her video camera.

“He said ‘You should try a 900.’ And there it was. I did my first-ever invert that day and it was the best feeling I’ve ever felt and he was there so stoked and I was stoked,” says the now 23-year-old Olympian. “The first day I ever tried a cork 900, I landed it and the rest is history.”

History is smiling on Ferreira as he joins Yater-Wallace on the second-ever U.S. Olympic halfpipe ski team. With a commanding season in the pipe, the Aspen High School graduate is peaking at the perfect time.

It feels like many years of effort — including winning a Denver Post Youth Excellence in Sports Award in 2011 — have built to this point.

“That����ap how I try to live my life. Through consistency. It����ap not good to have huge fluctuations. It����ap all about consistency and long-term growth as a person,” he says. “You know, always changing and becoming a better person.”

With an ever-escalating technical prowess and an effortless style he says he gleaned from his one-year-younger mentor Yater-Wallace, Ferreira is tracking toward Olympic glory. So far, the high point of his career was taking second at the Snowmass Grand Prix in front of his home crowd last month to cinch his spot on the U.S. Olympic Team.

“One of the best days of my life,” he says. “That moment will hold true to me for the rest of my life. Absolutely grateful and elated.”

It was Yater-Wallace who, in a push-and-pull scenario, was there for every step of this journey. Yater-Wallace grabbed the brightest of spotlights first, at age 15 with an X Games silver medal in their home pipe. Ferreira watched as his buddy lived the dream: big sponsors, big dollars and a big truck. Ferreira cheered his pal with unbridled energy. He still does, even as they share adjacent podiums. He’s the kind of friend everyone wants. As Ferreira now owns his share of that same spotlight, ask him about his motivation, his dreams and his skiing and he steers back to Yater-Wallace.

“I definitely have learned a lot from him. He doesn’t take a day for granted because he’s been in such crazy situations and he’s overcome adiversity so many times,” he says of his friend’s endurance through injuries, a near-fatal illness and financial struggles. “To be able to watch that, I have nothing but gratitude and a sense of happiness for him and of life. I see how he’s living and I think … it����ap just so cool that I can be a part of it and be his really good friend.”

Yater-Wallace was 8 and Ferreira was 9 when they set their shared goal: X Games gold. The event was right there in their backyard. They grew up watching the storied battles between pipe pioneers Simon Dumont and Tanner Hall. Now they are like those two warriors, brawling each other for that elusive Aspen X Games gold.

They came close last month in Aspen’s Buttermilk pipe, with Ferreira finishing second and Yater-Wallace third behind the dominant technician David Wise, who claimed his fourth Aspen X Games gold. It����ap a rough time to be an American halfpipe skier. Six of the world’s top-10 pipe skiers — — are on the U.S. Team. Any of them would be among the top two pipe skiers in any other country. But only four Americans can go to the Olympics. So two of the world’s top-ranked pipe skiers — Birk Irving, No. 5, and Kyle Smaine, No. 7 — are watching from home.

“I think about that all the time. If I was born in the 80s, I would have been growing up with Simon Dumont and Tanner Hall throwing 720s and 900s and it would have been awesome,” Ferreira says. “But at the same time that����ap what makes this so special right now, because it����ap so difficult on this team and you truly have to earn your place. Everybody on this team charges and you can’t take a minute off. You can’t lose your focus. You have to be 100 percent in the moment, crushing it all times.”

After the Olympics, Ferreira plans to ski in Europe’s prestigious SFR Tour final in Tignes, France. Then maybe back to school. He’s been studying at Utah’s Westminster College, a partner with U.S. Ski and Snowboard Association that fields 18 student-athletes at the PyeongChang Olympics.

But he wants to be in Colorado. Especially Aspen, home to his mom, dad and younger sister.

“For sure I want I want to be a part of the community and part of the Aspen Valley Ski & Snowboard Club and keep helping kids here, whatever that entails,” he says.

Gus Kenworthy

Freestyle skiing: Kenworthy was a silver medalist in slopestyle four years ago in Russia, but he made as many headlines for adopting some of Sochi’s stray dogs. And though he worried that it would hurt his sponsorships, he came out, and that boosted his marketability even more. Now he will be one of two openly gay U.S. athletes competing in PyeongChang.

Jamie Anderson

Snowboarding: Anderson, who will defend her slopestyle gold medal from Sochi, is third in the World Cup standings in that discipline, behind Reira Iwabuchi of Japan and New Zealand’s Christy Prior. Anderson has a shelf full of X Games medals; she won her first, a bronze, in 2006 when she was just 15.

Maddie Bowman

Freestyle halfpipe: Bowman returns to defend her 2014 gold medal, but she will face tough competition from Kexin Zhang of China and Cassie Sharpe of Canada, not to mention her U.S. teammates, Brita Sigourney, who leads the World Cup rankings; Devin Logan (fifth); and Annalisa Drew (seventh).

Nathan Chen

Figure skating: The 18-year-old Chen already is a two-time U.S. champion, and he won two gold medals in 2017 — in the ISU Grand Prix and the Four Continents Championship. Though young, Chen has a powerful repertoire that few can match: He performs five quads — jumps that include four revolutions — in his free skate and two in his short program. None of the three men on the U.S. skating team have Olympic experience. Vincent Zhou is even younger than Chen — 17 — and Adam Rippon is a rookie at age 28.

Ted Ligety

Skiing: Ligety, 33, had not made a World Cup podium for three years before winning a bronze at Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany, in late January. That sends the two-time Olympic gold medalist (the combined in 2006 and the giant slalom in 2014) to PyeongChang on a high note.

Alex Rigsby

Hockey: Rigsby will make her Olympic debut at goalie for the women’s team, which is seeking its first Olympic gold medal since 1998. Rigsby has played in four world championships for the United States, winning four gold medals. She has played the past three seasons for the Minnesota Whitecaps professional team.

Katie Uhlaender

Skeleton: In her third Olympics in 2014, Uhlaender finished off the podium, 0.04 seconds behind Russia’s Elena Nikitina. For a while, it looked as if she would move up to third and earn a bronze when Nikitina was stripped of her medal and banned from the Olympics in the wake of the scandal surrounding state-sponsored doping in Russia. But the Court of Arbitration for Sport overturned Nikitina’s ban last week.Uhlaender is the top-ranked American woman (12th) in the World Cup standings.

David Wise

Freestyle skiing: Wise enters the Olympics on a roll, winning gold at the Winter X Games after performing four doubles in four different directions on his final run. Wise will defend the halfpipe gold medal he won four years ago in Sochi.

Nina Roth

Curling: Roth will be the skip for the U.S. women’s team at her first Olympics. In fact, none of her curling teammates — Tabitha Peterson, Becca Hamilton, Corey Christensen and Aileen Geving — have Olympic experience, either. Roth, who placed fifth at the world championships in 2017, has a nursing degree and works as a nurse in the Madison, Wis., area.

Mikaela Shiffrin

Skiing: At 18, Shiffrin became the youngest skier to win gold in the slalom at the 2014 Games. At 22, she will try to become the first skier, male or female, to repeat as Olympic slalom champion. Shiffrin is the best skier in the world. She has nearly twice as many overall points in the World Cup standings as her next competitor. She ranks first in slalom, third in giant slalom and fifth in downhill. At the 2017 world championships, she became the first woman to win three consecutive slalom world titles in 78 years.

Elana Meyers Taylor

Bobsled:After a bronze at the Vancouver Games in 2010 and a silver four years later in Sochi, Taylor hopes the progression continues with a gold in PyeongChang. She ranks second in the World Cup standings with 1,591 points, behind Canadian Kaillie Humphries’s 1,631.

Jessie Diggins

Cross-country skiing: Diggins, third in the overall World Cup standings, could become the first American woman to medal in an Olympic cross-country event. At the 2017 world championships, Diggins won silver in the sprint freestyle event and bronze in the team sprint classic competition and finished fourth in the 4×5-kilometer relay and fifth in the 30K mass start.