The Freeride World Tour will take place for the first time this year under the umbrella of the International Ski and Snowboard Federation. The FIS is thus completing its collection of winter sports, but the freeride scene is divided about the takeover. The head of the FWT says: The merger is an opportunity for both sides. But how much bandage can a young sport like freeride tolerate?
For a brief moment, his world is turned upside down, he whirls through the air, down a 20 meter high ledge. When he lands on the soft snow below the rocky terrain without falling, Max Hitzig cheers. His competitors run towards him and congratulate the 20-year-old German. Nobody has ever managed a comparable massive backflip at a Freeride World Tour (FWT), the world championship in freeride. A jump to victory on the 2,454 meter “Ozone” slope in Canada’s Kicking Horse.
The merger with the International Ski and Snowboard Federation (FIS) in December 2022 gives the sport a new seriousness. In addition to alpine skiing and cross-country skiing, snowboarding, freestyle skiing and now also freeriding are now all under the umbrella of the FIS. “Freeride is the original way of skiing in the mountains”, says Nicolas Hale-Woods. The 54-year-old Swiss founded the Freeride World Tour in 2008. The series now consists of junior competitions, the qualifiers, challengers and the World Tour events in contest freeride. There are 6,000 licensed riders who compete in 200 events each year.
Freerider Max Hitzig won with a backflip on the “Ozone” slope in the Canadian Kicking Horse
Off-piste competitions
Spectacular descents peppered with tricks like Max Hitzig’s backflip are what make the sport so fascinating and inspire many young people around the world. The difference between alpine skiing and freeride competitions is that the latter go off-piste and prefer open terrain.
At the Freeride World Tour, the best freeriders on skis or snowboards test their skills at an international level every year between January and April. With four stops in Spain, Andorra, Canada and Austria, the riders will compete for a place in the grand finale in Verbier. In the end, eight women and 16 men remain, from whom the world champions are recruited.
freedom for creativity
Freeride is international, young, cool, modern and has an image that can help an institution like the FIS to undergo a makeover. Nicolas Hale-Woods admits: “Our goal has always been to bring the sport to the Olympics one day”. The whole development was geared towards that. In 2008 they held the first Xtreme Verbier, then a single competition. That’s when he and his team saw the “power” of this event, how well it was received by the young people. They began expanding the event and developing a series out of it, which took another ten years. The merger with the FIS is now the logical consequence and a win-win situation for both sides.
The day-to-day business of the tour remains with the FWT. The FIS takes over the marketing and administration of the events and supports the establishment of structures that correspond to the guidelines for Olympic sports. “With the integration of the FWT, the FIS is expanding its portfolio with one of the most exciting and dynamic winter sports competition formats”says FIS President Johan Eliasch.
For the time being, however, nothing should change in the rules of the competitions, says Hale-Woods, so there is still room for the freedom and creativity of the athletes.
That’s how freeriding works
In the competition, only the start and end of the race are defined. The athletes don’t have to show a fixed style otherwise either: they can incorporate freestyle elements such as jumps, flips or turns or rely on speed. For the later rating it depends on line choice, air & style, fluidity, control and technique.
No points without checking
Control is the most important aspect, a loss of this is judged badly by the jury, it starts with when a rider touches the ground with his hand. “We don’t want the drivers to go beyond their level”, says Hale Woods. The safety equipment is also obligatory, the drivers are equipped with helmets, complete avalanche safety equipment and avalanche backpacks, even if the slopes are strictly checked for safety beforehand.
A rider can achieve 100 points in one ride. Max Hitzig comes close to the perfect run with his 97.67 points, which he earned from his backflip in Canada. He studied the slope for a total of 21 hours, he says, first with binoculars from an observation post opposite, later photographers provided him with detailed photo material. On the morning of the competition, skiers will also ski down the slope to show the riders what the current snow conditions are like.
“There are people”says Hotzig, “They think I’m crazy.” But he knows exactly what he’s doing. In 2022 he took part in the World Cup for the first time with a wildcard as a career changer. At the stop in Fieberbrunn he immediately managed the winning descent. Hitzig sees the cooperation with the FIS as positive. “Freeride is a fringe sport with high risk”, but unfortunately not much money is involved. It’s not like alpine skiing, where you become famous and make a living from it. Through the FIS, a television broadcast could also become an issue.
Negative consequences for drivers?
But there are also voices in the scene who reject the professionalization of sport, emphasize the aspect of freedom and fear too many restrictions from the association.
According to the specialist website “downdays”, Markus Eder, one of the best freeriders ever, criticizes that other sports are at the FIS “always more important than freeskiing”. The integration of slopestyle, halfpipe and big air that has already taken place has even had a negative financial impact on the athletes. “In the end, the riders had to bow to the rules their national teams imposed on them – like wearing their national federation’s crappy clothes, which resulted in them losing their sponsors as they were never allowed to wear them.”
For Hale-Woods, freeriding is the most original form of skiing.
FIS: resources, marketing, ski resorts
Hale-Woods, on the other hand, sees the advantages above all: the merger means more security for the organizer, the sport can establish itself better. Because the FIS has great resources when it comes to marketing, it can arrange sponsors and open the way to state athlete promotion. At the same time, the FIS knows that it will run into problems if it doesn’t open up to new types of sport, says Hale-Woods. Associations like the FIS are disconnected from the youth, they cannot keep up with the rapid developments, mainly because of social media.
And the association can help find other ski resorts where competitions can take place. Meanwhile, Nicolas Hale-Woods is already dreaming of new stops for the Freeride World Tour, he’s talking about Alaska, Georgia, China, Italy and Russia. What hovers above everything is the topic of snow reliability. But not even the FIS has any influence on that.