Snowboard and Skiing

Skiing Freestyle – Can You Do Moguls And Aerials ?

November 16th, 2007 Subscribe To Our Feed

Of the various forms of skiing freestyle is the latest craze. It is not really a sport for the average person but more of a spectator sport. It is a staple at such sporting events as the extreme sports X-Games but is also a recognized event at the Winter Olympics. As it’s name suggests, it is evolving as a form of skiing and as a sport. Different events are being created all the time and showcased at premium events. Although there is great skill involved in each event, it seems to be more geared towards audience participation than downhill skiing or even slalom skiing. The most common skiing freestyle are Mogul runs and aerials. This article will cover how these events work and some of the recent history of freestyle skiing.

Mogul Event

Moguls were the first skiing freestyle 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.

Aerial Event

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.

New Freestyle Skiing Events

Skiing freestyle was possibly a reaction to the development of snowboarding events. Skiing was seen as more traditional and stuck in it’s ways by comparison to snowboarding so freestyle skiing was the antidote to that idea. To this extent it still takes some inspiration from snowboarding and new events seem to derive from popular snowboard events and activities. These include halfpipe, big air, slopestyle and skiercross. They are basically tricks and jumps done in a halfpipe using skis. It is a lot harder to perform these types of tricks on skis by comparison to a snowboard so a new type of ski has been developed. They are designed for taking off and landing tricks both forwards and backwards. These skiing freestyle events are popular at the X-Games, and will soon be a part of the Winter Olympics too.