Olympic Snowboarding Big Air Schedule 2026 Men's Qualifying Live Stream

The men's snowboarding big air competition is one of the first events to get underway at the 2026 Winter Olympics.

Three qualifying runs take place on Thursday afternoon to set the stage for Saturday's final.

China's Yiming Su is the favorite to repeat his gold-medal performance from Beijing four years ago. American Oliver Martin is one of a handful of athletes who could stop the repeat from happening.

Men's Snowboard Big Air Qualifying Info

Date: Thursday, February 5

Start Time: 1:30 p.m. ET

Live Stream: Peacock and NBCOlympics.com

Preview

Thursday's three qualifying runs will determine the 12 finalists for Saturday's medal event.

The two best scores from the three runs are used to determine which athletes move on to the Friday.

Four years ago, the cut off for the final was 142 points, which means a pair of scores in the mid 70s is the minimum expectation to feel safe about advancement.

Su comes into Milan as the favorite because of his gold-medal triumph in Beijing in 2022 and his lead in the FIS World Cup standings.

The Japanese trio of Kira Kimura, Yuto Miyamura and Hiroto Ogiwara rank second, third and fourth in the FIS World Cup standings.

They are among a handful of potential medalists in the field. American Oliver Martin is viewed as a potential contender, as is Canada's Eli Bouchard.

The big air event has only been around for two previous Olympics, but there were no repeat medalists from 2018 to 2022.

The one trend from both of those competitions is to not expect the best from the eventual winner in qualifying. Su was fifth in qualifying in 2022, while 2018 gold medalist Sebastien Toutant was fifth in his qualifying heat.

The top contenders likely won't burn all of their top tricks in the qualifying round. The final is where we should expect more eye-popping tricks and high scores.