It's Official: Freeride Skiing and Snowboarding Are The Newest Winter Olympic Sports
It’s official.
After years of speculation, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) confirmed that at Alpes 2030, freeride skiers and snowboarders will have a shot at taking home Olympic hardware.
“Freeride has experienced rapid international growth, benefitting from a strong youth fanbase and visually spectacular competition. It uses a natural field of play, which minimises its impact on the Games,” the organization said in a press release. “Comprising four events, it will provide an Olympic opportunity for 44 athletes (22 women and 22 men) to compete at the Games for the first time.”
Beyond that, the IOC didn’t share too many details. We don’t know where, exactly, our favorite skiers will throw down in the Alps.
Soon after the announcement, though, U.S. Ski & Snowboard, the National Governing Body for skiing and snowboarding in the U.S., did say that freeride skiing and snowboarding had been added as a new discipline.
The organization said it plans to work with IFSA—the non-profit that runs junior and adult freeride competitions in the Americas—to oversee grassroots-level events. Historically, IFSA competitions have fed into the pro-level Freeride World Tour.
U.S. Ski & Snowboard said it will publish selection criteria for freeride and name teams during the 2026-27 season, providing athletes with the same support as the organization’s existing 230 athletes. Skiers who participate in freeride will be on the Stifel U.S. Freeski Team, while snowboarders will be on the Hydro Flask U.S. Snowboard Team.
“Bringing this discipline into our high-performance system means our coaches and sport scientists can start supporting these athletes now, well ahead of 2030,” said Anouk Patty, U.S. Ski & Snowboard chief of sport, in a release. “We are excited to welcome them to our organization.”
What Is Freeride?
In simple terms, freeride is ski movie skiing, but squeezed into a competition format. Organizers determine a venue—usually a steep, challenging face peppered with rocks, cliffs, and chutes—and send athletes down it one-by-one.
While competing, those athletes can do whatever they like and sculpt their own path down the mountain. Some ski as fast as they can. Others navigate through rocky, exposed sections. Often, they throw tricks, like 360s and backflips. The open-ended format makes freeride, in some ways, one of skiing’s loosest competitive disciplines. Athletes have a lot of choice in deciding what their runs look like.
There are judging criteria, though. The current highest level of freeride competition, the Freeride World Tour, judges based on five categories: line, control, technique, fluidity, and air and style. That may sound complicated, but the winning runs essentially boil down to the ones that are most fun to watch—think big cliff jumps and impressive off-trail skiing.
The inclusion will surely create a debate within skiing, much like the one that appeared when park skiing became an Olympic sport in 2014. Freeride has long had a counter-culture, do-what-you-want flavor, and some corners of skiing believe it doesn’t belong in the regimented Olympic program.
POWDER explored this debate two years ago as the prospect of an Olympic freeride event gained momentum.
“Olympic bids are calculated gambles for action sports that blur the line between athletics and art. Here, freeride could lose some of its wildness and rawness, with the potential for greater athlete support in return,” we wrote. “As freeskiing’s various disciplines grew older and more established, these kinds of trades were inevitable, and the hope is, this time around, it’ll benefit those who really matter: the athletes and dedicated event organizers who’ve been keeping the sport alive since the 1990s.”
Related: “We Are Ready for the Olympic Stage,” Freeride Boss Eyes French Alps 2030 Inclusion
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