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.
Freestyle skiing has been contested at the Winter Olympic Games since the 1992 Winter Games in Albertville, France.
Sarah Jean Burke was a Canadian freestyle skier who was a pioneer of the superpipe event. She was a five-time Winter X Games gold medallist, and won the world championship in the halfpipe in 2005. She successfully lobbied the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to have the event added to the Olympic program for the 2014 Winter Olympics. She was considered a medal favourite in the event. Burke died following a training accident in Utah in 2012.
Rosalind Groenewoud is a Canadian freeskier, known as Roz G in the action sports world. She is the 2011 FIS World Champion in halfpipe, Groenewoud is also a 2012 Winter X Games champion x 2 and has 3 silver and two bronze medals from X Games competitions in halfpipe. She won the AFP Overall Championship in 2009 & 2010 and AFP Halfpipe Overall Ranking in 2012. Groenewoud is a two-time Olympian, 2014 and 2018. She is the first woman to design her own pro-model freestyle ski with the female owned ski company Coalition Snow.
The boys' halfpipe event in freestyle skiing at the 2012 Winter Youth Olympics in Innsbruck, Austria, was held on 14 and 15 January at Kühtai. 13 athletes from 13 different countries took part in this event.
The girls' halfpipe event in freestyle skiing at the 2012 Winter Youth Olympics in Innsbruck, Austria, was held on 14 and 15 January at Kühtai. 10 athletes from 10 different countries took part in this event.
David Wise is an American freestyle skier. He is a two-time Olympic gold medalist and a five-time X Games Gold Medalist. In 2014, Wise won his third consecutive gold medal at Winter X Games XVIII in Aspen, Colorado, before heading to Sochi for the 2014 Winter Olympics. There, he became the first Olympic gold medalist in the Men's Freeski Halfpipe, which debuted in the Winter Games that year. In 2018, after struggling both personally and professionally since his win in Sochi, Wise won his fourth gold medal at the X Games just before he left for PyeongChang to defend his Olympic title. After a sub-par qualifying competition that placed him in the fifth drop-in position for the finals, Wise failed to complete each of his first two runs due, in both cases, to a binding malfunction. On his third and final run, Wise completed a career-best run to take the gold medal, the second Olympic gold medal of his career, with a score of 97.20.
Half-pipe skiing is the sport of riding snow skis on a half-pipe. Competitors perform a series of tricks while going down the pipe. The current world record for highest jump in a half-pipe is held by Joffrey Pollet-Villard, with 26 feet 3 inches. The sport is considered to be dangerous compared to other sports, and helmets are required to be worn during competitions. Half-pipe skiing has been part of the Winter X Games since 2002, and made its Olympic debut at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia. David Wise of the United States of America became the first Olympic champion in this discipline with a total of 92.00 points.
Freestyle skiing at the 2014 Winter Olympics was held at the Rosa Khutor Extreme Park near Krasnaya Polyana, Russia. The ten events took place between 6–21 February 2014.
The men's halfpipe event in freestyle skiing at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, Russia took place 18 February 2014. In April 2011 freestyle halfpipe was added to the Olympic program, meaning the event will make its debut.
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.
James Machon is a freestyle skier who competes in the halfpipe, his first Olympics was the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi.
Emma Lonsdale is a freestyle skier who competes in the halfpipe. Her Olympics debut was at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, competing for Team GB.
Mirjam Jaeger is a Swiss former freestyle skier. Now she concentrates on her modeling and sports broadcaster career.
Murray Buchan, nicknamed Muzza, is a freestyle skier who competes in the halfpipe. Buchan's Olympic debut was at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, where he competed on 18 February 2014 in the halfpipe, finishing in 17th place in the qualification round.
Cassie Sharpe is a Canadian freestyle skier. Sharpe became the Olympic champion in women's halfpipe after winning gold in Pyeongchang, South Korea at the 2018 Winter Olympics. She won a silver medal at the 2015 World Championships in halfpipe in Kreischberg and won gold and bronze in superpipe at the Winter X Games in 2016 and 2018, respectively.
Rachael Karker is a Canadian freestyle skier.
The girls' halfpipe event in freestyle skiing at the 2020 Winter Youth Olympics took place on 20 January at the Leysin Park & Pipe.
The 2021 FIS Freestyle Ski and Snowboarding World Championships were held in Idre, Rogla, Almaty and Aspen with the ski and snowboard cross events held in Idre from 11 to 13 February 2021, the parallel and giant slalom snowboard in Rogla from 1 to 2 March 2021, moguls and aerials held in Almaty from 8 to 11 March 2021, slopestyle, halfpipe and big air events of both Snowboard and Freeski in Aspen from 10 to 16 March 2021. Calgary was selected as a replacement of China to host the halfpipe, big air and slopestyle events, but on 20 January 2021, they pulled out.
