Personal information | ||||||||||||||||||
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Nationality | American | |||||||||||||||||
Born | 1966 (age 57–58) Windsor, Ontario, Canada [1] | |||||||||||||||||
Sport | ||||||||||||||||||
Country | United States | |||||||||||||||||
Sport | Freestyle skiing | |||||||||||||||||
Medal record
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Melanie Palenik (born 1966) is a Canadian-born American freestyle skier and world champion.
She competed at the FIS Freestyle World Ski Championships 1986 in Tignes, in aerials and moguls. She won a gold medal in combined at the FIS Freestyle World Ski Championships 1989 in Oberjoch, and a bronze medal in aerials, while placing tenth in moguls and tenth in ballet. In 1988 she won a gold medal in aerials at the Olympics in Calgary Canada. She also took part in the FIS Freestyle World Ski Championships 1991 in Lake Placid, New York, where she placed 8th in moguls. [2]
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.
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.
Alexandre Bilodeau is a Canadian retired freestyle skier from Rosemere, Quebec, Bilodeau currently resides in Montreal, Quebec. Bilodeau won a gold medal in the men's moguls at the 2010 Winter Olympics in Vancouver, becoming the first Canadian to win a gold medal at an Olympic Games held in Canada. At the 2014 Winter Olympics, he became the first Olympian in history to defend his gold medal in any freestyle skiing event as well as the first Canadian to defend an individual title since Catriona Le May Doan at the 2002 Winter Olympics. Bilodeau is a three-time FIS World Champion in dual moguls, and is also a two-time Worlds silver medallist in moguls. He was the FIS World Cup champion for the 2008–09 season winning the moguls and overall freestyle skiing title that season. In his final World Cup race, he retired with a win, and in doing so, surpassed Jean-Luc Brassard for the most World Cup medals by a Canadian.
Chloé Dufour-Lapointe is a Canadian freestyle skier. She was the 2013 FIS World Champion in dual moguls with her winning run at the 2013 World Championships. Dufour-Lapointe was the runner-up and silver medallist at the FIS Freestyle World Ski Championships 2011 as well and placed fifth at the 2010 Olympic Games. She won silver at the 2014 Olympic Games behind her sister Justine.
Mikaël Kingsbury is a freestyle skier from Quebec. He is the most accomplished mogul skier of all time. He achieved eminence early in his career after earning the 2009–10 FIS World Cup Rookie of the Year award. He is a ten-time FIS Freestyle World Cup title-holder for overall moguls and nine-time title-holder for overall freestyle, owning the records for most men's Moguls World Cup titles and Overall Freestyle World Cup titles. He also owns the records for career World Cup moguls victories with 78, and consecutive Freestyle World Cup event wins with 13. He is the first man to have won both the moguls and dual moguls World Championship events, and has won the most medals at the Freestyle World Championships of any male competitor in history, having won a medal in 13 of the 14 events he has competed in. Kingsbury won the Olympic silver medal in 2014 and 2022, and, at the 2018 PyeongChang Winter Olympics, he won the gold medal in men's moguls.
Justine Dufour-Lapointe is a Canadian freestyle skier. She was the Olympic champion in the moguls event at the 2014 Winter Olympics and won a silver medal in moguls at the 2018 Winter Olympics. The gold and silver she and her sister Chloe Dufour-Lapointe won in 2014 was the first time that Canadian sisters stood together on the podium, and the fourth time ever by all nations. In winning the Olympics, she became the youngest freestyle skiing Olympic champion ever at nineteen years of age. Dufour-Lapointe was the FIS World Cup rookie of the year for the 2010–11 season. Dufour-Lapointe was the world champion in moguls at the 2015 World Championships has also won a silver and two other bronze medals in the moguls event at the Freestyle World Ski Championships.
Yulia Evgenievna Galysheva is a Kazakhstani mogul skier who won three medals at FIS Freestyle Ski World Championships, bronze medal at the 2018 Pyeongchang Olympic Games and two gold medals at the Asian Winter Games in 2011.
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.
Perrine Laffont is a French mogul skier and the 2017 Dual Moguls world champion and moguls silver medalist. She won the gold medal at the 2018 Winter Olympic Games in the moguls event, and was back-to-back overall winner of the FIS Freestyle Ski World Cup in the 2018–19 and 2019–20 seasons.
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.
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.
Ikuma Horishima is a Japanese freestyle skier who competes internationally. He competed for Japan at the FIS Freestyle Ski and Snowboarding World Championships 2017 in Sierra Nevada, Spain, where he won a gold medal in Moguls, and another gold medal in Dual moguls.
Maria Quintana is an American freestyle skier and world champion.
Anna Rose Fraser-Sproule is a Canadian freestyle skier.
Vasilisa Vasiliyevna Semenchuk is a Russian freestyle skier who competed for the Soviet Union.
Anastasia Andreyevna Smirnova is a Russian freestyle skier. She is a 2021 World Champion in dual moguls.
Rachael Karker is a Canadian freestyle skier.
Trace Worthington is an American former freestyle skier. He competed in two events at the 1994 Winter Olympics. After retiring from the sport, Worthington became a sports commentator, working for both NBC Sports and CBS Sports.