Australia's hopes of further success at the Winter Olympic Games has received a boost with the addition of ski and snowboard slopestyle events to the Sochi 2014 games' program.

Slopestyle, in which skiers and boarders work their way through a series of jumps, rails slides and other features while being judged on the style, originality and difficulty of their tricks, received the backing of the International Olympic Committee at its meeting in Durban this week. Snowboard parallel slalom was also added to the list of sports for Sochi 2014.

Australia boasts two world championship medallists in ski slopestyle, with Mt Buller's Anna Segal taking gold and Russ Henshaw the bronze at the 2011 titles in Park City, Utah, in February.

The two slopestyle skiers joined Nate Johnstone, Holly Crawford and Alex ‘Chumpy' Pullin as 2011 World Championship medallists, the three snowboarders taking gold at their world titles in January.

Segal, who has skied since the age of 3, pursued a moguls career before swapping to slopestyle and has since established herself as one of the world's elite performers in recent seasons. The 24-year-old VIS athlete won the 2007 US Open and took the gold at the prestigious X Games in 2009.

Henshaw had a brilliant 2011 season. The 20-year-old skier took the silver medal at the X Games in Aspen, Colorado, in late January before following it up with the world championship bronze a week later.

Ski & Snowboard Australia CEO, Michael Kennedy, said the move to more youth-orientated events on the Olympic program was a further boost to his sport.

"Australia has proven to be very good at producing winter sport champions in the newer disciplines of skiing and snowboarding for a number of years now, having won many Olympic, World Championship and World Cup medals in aerials, moguls, ski and snowboard cross as well as snowboard halfpipe," Kennedy said.

"We adapt well to the new disciplines and already we have two athletes in Anna and Russ who are world class performers in slopestyle."

"Skiing and Snowboarding remain one of Australia's most popular recreational sports with over a million annual participants and there is no doubt that there are kids out on the slopes of our resorts right now who have an added connection to the Olympic Winter Games and who are motivated to go on and try and achieve the ultimate success of an Olympic medal."

Slopestyle events will be contested at the inaugural Winter Youth Olympics Games in January 2012 at Innsbruck, Austria.

Ski and Snowboard Australia