Personal information | ||||||||||||||||||
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Nationality | Canadian | |||||||||||||||||
Born | June 29, 1961 | |||||||||||||||||
Sport | ||||||||||||||||||
Country | Canada | |||||||||||||||||
Sport | Freestyle skiing | |||||||||||||||||
Event(s) | Aerials, Moguls, ballet | |||||||||||||||||
Retired | 1989 [1] | |||||||||||||||||
Medal record
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Meredith Anne Gardner (born June 29, 1961) is a Canadian retired freestyle skier who competed in ski ballet, mogul skiing, and aerial skiing. Gardner competed as a member of the Canadian Women's Freestyle Team from 1981 to 1988, winning the 1985 and 1988 World Championship in aerial skiing. [2]
Gardner was inducted into the Canadian Ski Hall of Fame in 1995. [2]
Four freestyle skiing events were held at the 2002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, at the venue in Deer Valley. There were both men's and women's competition in both aerials and moguls events. In moguls, the athletes ski down a slope littered with moguls (bumps), attempting to get down in as fast a time as possible while also attempting to get points for technique and their two aerial jumps during the course. The aerials events consisted of two jumps, which were judged by air, form and landing.
Kirstie Claire Marshall is an Australian aerial skier and Victorian state politician.
The freestyle skiing competition of the 1994 Winter Olympics was held at Kanthaugen Freestyle Arena. There were four events, taking place between 15 and 24 February 1994. The freestyle program was expanded at this Olympics, with aerials, previously a demonstration event, added as a full medal event.
Lydia Lassila is an Australian Olympic freestyle skier gold medalist who competed in the 2002, 2006, 2010, 2014 and 2018 Winter Olympic Games. She is the 2010 Olympic champion and the 2014 bronze medalist in aerials.
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.
The Canadian Ski Hall of Fame was created by the Canadian Ski Museum in 1982 to honour skiing pioneers, competitors, coaches, officials, and builders.
Lloyd Langlois is a Canadian freestyle skier and Olympic medalist. He received a bronze medal at the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, in aerials.
Kanthaugen Freestyle Arena is a freestyle skiing stadium located in the hillside area of Kanthaugen in Lillehammer, Norway. Opened in 1992, it was built for the 1994 Winter Olympics. The venue consists of three hills—one each for aerials, moguls and ski ballet. The moguls hill has a capacity for 12,000 spectators while the other two have a 15,000-person capacity. The arena is designated as Norway's national venue for freestyle skiing. It hosted the FIS Freestyle Skiing World Cup in 1993 and 1995, and is scheduled to host freestyle skiing and snowboarding at the 2016 Winter Youth Olympics. The arena is owned by Lillehammer Olympiapark and is located adjacent to the ski jumping hill Lysgårdsbakken.
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.
Rhona and Rhoda Wurtele are identical twins and Canada's women's skiing pioneers and champions of the 1940s and 1950s. Together they made up the entire 1948 Olympic Women's Alpine team for Canada.
Travis Gerrits is a former Canadian freestyle skier. Gerrits was the silver medalist from the 2013 FIS World Championships and was named the FIS Rookie of the Year in 2011.
Marie-Claude Asselin is a Canadian former freestyle skier competing from 1977 to 1982 in which she was a three-time world champion.
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.
The 2015 FIS Freestyle Ski and Snowboarding World Championships were held in Kreischberg, Austria from January 15–25, 2015. In 2014, the FIS decided to merge the FIS Freestyle World Ski Championships with the FIS Snowboarding World Championships starting with these championships. The Austrian municipality of Kreischberg was awarded the event in 2010.
Kristean Porter is an American freestyle skier. She was born in Biloxi. She competed at the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, in women's aerials. She won a gold medal in combined at the FIS Freestyle World Ski Championships 1995.
Anna Rose Fraser-Sproule 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.
Alain LaRoche is a retired Canadian freestyle skier who competed from 1982 to 1990. LaRoche competed in aerials, moguls, ski ballet, and combined. At the inaugural Freestyle World Ski Championships in 1986 at Tignes, France, LaRoche took gold in the combined event. Across eight World Cup seasons, LaRoche amassed 21 first-place finishes, a mark that was eclipsed by Mikael Kingsbury in 2015.
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.