Freestyle Skiing

Freestyle skiing developed out of ski acrobatics, which started in the 1930s in the United States. It became popular in the 1960s, with the first formal competitions starting at Waterville Valley, New Hampshire, in the USA.

Freestyle skiing was first held at the 1988 Winter Olympics as a demonstration sport. In 1992, moguls was contested as a full-medal sport in Albertville, with aerials and ballet contested as demonstration events. Freestyle has become a very popular spectator sport at the Olympics, and the program has expanded to now include aerials, moguls, ski-cross, halfpipe, and slopestyle events for both men and women. Beijing 2022 brought the first big air event for both men and women, and the first mixed aerials team event. Ballet was never contested as a medal sport at the Olympics, and international competition in that event basically stopped after 2000.

Canada leads the medal table, followed closely by the United States. American David Wise and Canadian Alex Bilodeau lead the gold medal count, both with two gold medals. Wise has a total of three medals at the Olympics, the same number as Canadian Mikaël Kingsbury, Chinese Jia Zongyang and American Nick Goepper. Eileen Gu, of China, is the only female freestyle skier with two gold medals. Gu has also won three medals in freestyling, the same number as her compatriot Xu Mengtao, Norwegian Kari Traa, and Swiss skier Mathilde Gremaud.

Freestyle is considered a discipline of the sport of skiing by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and, as such, it is governed internationally by the Fédération Internationale de Ski (FIS), which has 136 member nations as of 2022. The FIS was founded on 2 February 1924, during the Chamonix Olympics. It succeeded the Internationale Skikommission (CIS), which was formed on 18 February 1910, in Christiania (today Oslo). FIS not only governs freestyle skiing, but also Alpine skiing, cross-country skiing, Nordic combined, ski jumping, and snowboarding.