Freestyle skiing has seen a rise in popularity in recent years. It is showcased not only at extreme sports events like X-Games, but is also recognized as an Olympic sport. Both moguls and aerials, the two major types of freestyle skiing, are medal events in the Olympics, and newer freestyle skiing styles are popping up all the time.
Moguls
Moguls were the first freestyle skiing event to become an Olympic medal event. In mogul skiing, skiers must ski down a slope where they turn around large bumps, or moguls. There are also two jumps in the run, which they must perform a jump or trick off of. The course itself is short and steep – usually about 30 degrees and about 700-900 feet long.
Mogul skiers are judged on form, turns, and jumps, and those scores are combined with their time to get an overall score. In this type of freestyle skiing, it’s not enough to get down the mountain quickly; they have to do it with style. Mogul skiing first became an Olympic sport during the 1992 games in Albertville, where Edgar Grospiron from France won the gold medal for the men, and Donna Weinbrecht from the United States took home gold for the women.
Aerials
Aerials are the event that most people think of when they think of freestyle skiing. In aerials, the skier goes down and off a jump which then launches them about 40-50 feet in the air. In the air, they perform multiple twists and flips (much like a competitive diver would) then land on their skis on the hill below. The skier is then judged on three areas – takeoff, jump form, and landing.
This score is than factored in with the degree of difficulty of the jump for the final score. Currently, the top aerial skiers are performing jumps with a triple back flip with four or five twists. Aerial freestyle skiing first became an Olympic sport during the 1994 games in Lillehammer, where Andreas Schönbächler from Switzerland won the gold medal for the men, and Lina Cheryazova from Uzbekistan won the gold for the women.
Other Freestyle Skiing
There are other forms of freestyle skiing that are gaining in popularity as well. These “new school” events include halfpipe, big air, slopestyle and skiercross. These events take a lot of tricks from snowboarding, but are done on skis. Special skis are used that are designed for taking off and landing tricks both forwards and backwards. These freestyle skiing events are some of the most popular at X-Games, and are beginning to be recognized by the Olympics as well.
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