All About Freestyle Skiing
Hi all, as you may know, I’m taking Dear Sports Fan on the road for the next four weeks on a European and near Asian adventure that will include lots of sports watching in various countries and I hope will make for a very interesting addition to the normal writing of this blog. So far… I’ve sat in JFK as my flight has been delayed three times, so… let’s talk about freestyle skiing!
Freestyle skiing is a lot like the subject of our last Winter Olympics preview — Snowboarding. Like Snowboarding, Freestyle Skiing is a relatively new sport although older than I thought. Its first appearance in the Olympics was as an experimental addition on 1988 and it became official four years later. Like Snowboarding, Freestyle skiing is an incredibly varied sport. Its events award skill, precision, strength, speed, and flight.
How Does Freestyle Skiing Work?
Freestyle skiing’s events are so different from one another that it’s hard to answer this question without saying that it works differently for different events and therefore stepping all over the events section farther down. In all of the events, skiers strap on helmets, goggles, and skis and go flying down the side of a mountain racing one another or the clock for speed, or putting on a wild show for judges.
Why Do People Like Watching Freestyle Skiing?
Freestyle skiing is a bit of a tweener sport. It sits down right between the pure speed and history of Alpine Skiing and the new-age X-Games culture of Snowboarding. For Alpine Skiing traditionalists, Freestyle skiing offers a more relatable, more palatable way to enjoy a more
open, creative sport. For Snowboarding fans, Freestyle Skiing offers the same big air, the same acrobatic tricks, just with different stuff on the athlete’s feet. Freestyles Skiing also has a couple tricks up its sleeve when it comes to creative events because it doesn’t and can’t emulate any Alpine Skiing events… because that would just be Alpine Skiing!
What are the Different Freestyle Skiing Events
There are five medal events in Freestyle skiing, each with a medal for men and women. Three of the events are mirror images of Snowboarding Events: Halfpipe, Ski Cross, and Slopestyle. As a reminder from Halfpipe is a judged event where athletes compete to do the coolest tricks on a U-shaped tube, Slopestyle is the same kind of event but performed on a “terrain park” which includes jumps and obstacles like rails, and Ski Cross is a chaotic race where four skiers jostle to get to the bottom of a winding course that includes a couple of jumps. The two events Unique to Freestyle Skiing are the Moguls and Aerials competitions. For those of you who don’t know from having taken a wrong turn on a ski slope, moguls are big bumps of packed snow that cover a ski run. They’re horrifyingly difficult to maneuver through if you’re a novice skier but competitors in this event make it look effortless. It’s mostly judged as a race but form does count and competitors must wear knee pads a different color from their ski pants so judges can see if their knees ever do anything but move like completely coordinated pistons. Aerials is the diving competition of the Winter Olympics. Aerial skiing runs consist of a single trick done fifteen or more feet in the air. The trick’s difficulty is taken into account as is the form of the take-off and landing.
How Dangerous is Freestyle Skiing
The events vary but overall, it’s probably one of the more dangerous non-sledding Winter Olympic sports. Moguls can’t be good for your joints (no puns, please) and muffing a landing during an aerial attempt could result in serious injury. A Brazilian Freestyle Skier who hoped to compete in her first Olympics in a few days is in bad shape after hitting a tree in a training run.
What’s the State of Gender Equality in Freestyle Skiing?
Hoorah! Again, it seems to be perfect. Go Snowboarding and Freestyle Skiing!!
What are Some Fun Olympic Freestyle Skiing Stories?
United States Freestyle Skier Emily Cook missed out on the 2002 Olympics after she “shattered” both her feet. Now she’s back.
Here’s an awesome website that details the course designs for some of the Freestyle Skiing events:
http://xgames.espn.go.com/snowboarding/gallery/9590061/2014-sochi-olympics-ski-snowboard-slopestyle-course-designs
Thanks for reading,
Ezra