Melissa Larsen has written an article over at ESPN on the FIS decision to effectively ignore the recommendations from the Joint Task Force looking at the Winter Olympics snowboard qualification issues. The FIS is great at running ski events but has had a more troubled time running the snowboard events.

The main issues revolve around the crammed contest schedule in the year lead up to the Winter Olympics (for the 2014 Sochi, Russia games the qualification period starts July 2012 and runs to January 19, 2014). Plus, FIS sanctioned events have to be open to everyone, so some TTR events can’t be sanctioned because they’re invite only. The obvious result from this is that riders may have to make a decision between TTR and FIS events – potentially compromising the level of competition in one set of events.

We mentioned Terje Haakonsen’s concerns back here – it’s worth going back and having a read cause the guy knows what he’s talking about. I would say that it will be interesting to see where this goes but effectively it seems that the decision has been made and it’s now up to snowboarders to either deal with it or forgo Olympic participation.