Skiing is the use of skis to glide on snow for basic transport, a recreational activity, or a competitive winter sport. Many types of competitive skiing events are recognized by the International Olympic Committee (IOC), and the International Ski and Snowboard Federation (FIS).
Freestyle skiing is a skiing discipline comprising aerials, moguls, cross, half-pipe, slopestyle and big air as part of the Winter Olympics. It can consist of a skier performing aerial flips and spins and can include skiers sliding rails and boxes on their skis. Known as "hot-dogging" in the early 1970s, it is also commonly referred to as freeskiing, jibbing, as well as many other names, around the world.
Ski cross is a skiing competition which incorporates terrain features traditionally found in freestyle skiing with courses which include big-air jumps and high-banked turns. In spite of the fact that it is a timed racing event, it is often considered a type of freestyle skiing. What sets ski cross apart from other alpine skiing disciplines is that it involves more than one skier racing down the course. Any intentional contact with other competitors like grabbing or any other forms of contact meant to give the competitor an advantage leads to disqualification.
Freestyle skiing has been contested at the Winter Olympic Games since the 1992 Winter Games in Albertville, France.
Mogul skiing is a freestyle skiing competition consisting of one timed run of free skiing on a steep, heavily moguled course, stressing technical turns, aerial maneuvers and speed. Internationally, the sport is contested at the FIS Freestyle World Ski Championships, and at the Winter Olympic Games.
Aleksei Gennadyevich Grishin is a Belarusian freestyle skier who competed at five consecutive Olympics from 1998 to 2014. He won Belarus' only medal at the 2002 Winter Olympics, a bronze in aerials. In 2010, he won the first ever Winter Olympics gold medal for his country, again in the aerials. He finished fourth in 2006 and eighth in 1998. He was the Olympic flag bearer for Belarus at the opening ceremony of the 2014 Games.
Aerial skiing or aerials is a freestyle skiing discipline where athletes ski down a slope to launch themselves off a kicker and perform multiple twists and flips before landing on an inclined landing hill. Aerialists are scored on their jumps based on air, form and landing with their score multiplied by the degree of difficulty of the jump they performed.
Ashley Caldwell is an American freestyle skier who has competed in aerials since 2008. Caldwell was named to the US team for the 2010 Winter Olympics in January 2010 after competing in the sport for only two seasons. The youngest in the event, she reached the finals of the Aerials. Caldwell won her first World Cup aerials event in the United States in Lake Placid, New York, in January 2011, becoming the youngest freestyle female ever to win.
Sonja Reichart is a German freestyle skier.
Danielle Scott is an Australian freestyle skier specialising in Aerial Skiing. Scott represented Australia at the 2014 Olympic Winter Games. She won a bronze medal at the 2013 FIS Freestyle World Ski Championships. Scott was offered a scholarship for Artistic Gymnastics at the age of 7 at the Australian Institute of Sport, being the youngest athlete to be offered a scholarship at the Australian Institute of Sport.
Ski ballet is a form of ballet performed on skis. It is very similar to figure skating, combining spins, jumps, and flips in a two-minute routine choreographed to music. It was part of the professional freestyle skiing tours of the 1970s and 1980s and then an official FIS and Olympic discipline until the year 2000. Ski ballet became known as Acroski in the 1990s in an effort to legitimize its place among the competitive ski community, especially to the FIS. It is no longer a part of competitive freestyle skiing.
Rowan Cheshire is a British freestyle skier, specialising in the halfpipe. Cheshire competed in the 2013 FIS Freestyle Skiing World Cup in Voss, Norway, where she finished 17th. She won a bronze medal at the 2013 World Junior Championships in Valmalenco. In January 2014 she became the first British female skier to win a halfpipe competition on the FIS Freestyle Skiing World Cup when she took the halfpipe event at a meeting in Calgary. This was the first Freestyle World Cup win for a British female skier since Jilly Curry won an aerials competition in 1992.
Laura Peel is an Australian freestyle skier. She was two time world champion and two time World Cup winner, at the women's aerials discipline. She competed at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, in women's aerials, at the 2018 Winter Olympics, in women's aerials, where she placed fifth, and at the 2022 Winter Olympics, in Women's aerials, where she placed fifth.
Hanna Andreyeuna Huskova is a Belarusian freestyle skier specializing in aerials. She competed at the FIS Freestyle Ski and Snowboarding World Championships 2015, where she qualified for the aerials final, and placed sixth in the final. At the 2014 Olympics, she placed 21st in aerials. She won a gold medal at the 2018 Olympics, and won silver at the 2022 Olympics, in Women's aerials.
Jilly Wallace is a British former freestyle skier, who won 29 FIS World Cup medals, which was the most for any British skier or snowboarder until 2020. She competed at the 1992 and 1994 Winter Olympics. She is 6 times World Champion in Laser-Run at the UIPM World Championships.
Lloyd Wallace is a British freestyle skier who competed at the 2018 and 2022 Winter Olympics.
Lyubov Igorevna Nikitina is a Russian freestyle skier who competes internationally.
Maria Quintana is an American freestyle skier and world champion.
Freestyle skiing at the 2022 Winter Olympics were held at the Genting Snow Park in Zhangjiakou and Big Air Shougang in Beijing, China. The events were held between 3 and 19 February 2022. A total of 13 freestyle skiing events were held.
