Freestyle Skiing at the 2018 Winter Olympics

The freestyle skiing events at the 2018 Winter Olympics were held at Phoenix PyeongChang ski resort, known until shortly before the Games as Bogwang Phoenix Park, which had opened in December 1995 and would also host the Olympic snowboarding tournament. The program remained the same as it had been in 2014, when halfpipe and slopestyle had been added to the tournament.

Canada captured the most gold medals, as they had in 2010 and 2014, as well as the overall medal total, which they had also accomplished at the previous edition. Canada and the United States were not, however, quite as dominant as they had been in Sochi, where they took 16 of the of 30 available medals and 7 of the 10 titles between them. This time they took only eleven of the medals and five of the golds, with Canada’s four victories making it the only nation to win more than one event. Many more nations, therefore, were able to experience a podium finish in freestyle skiing in PyeongChang.

Perhaps the most unlikely victory came from Ukraine’s Oleksandr Abramenko who, despite competing in his fourth Olympics, was relatively unknown before he won the men’s aerials. It was his country’s first podium finish in freestyle skiing and only its third winter Olympic medal as an independent nation. Izzy Atkin of Great Britain, Yuliya Galysheva of Kazakhstan, and Nico Porteous of New Zealand, meanwhile, snagged their countries’ first medals in freestyle skiing by taking bronze in women’s slopestyle and moguls, and men’s halfpipe respectively.

Brendan Newby of Ireland, competing in the men’s halfpipe, became the first Olympic freestyle skier from his country, as did Robert Franco of Mexico after his participation in the men’s slopestyle. Franco’s participation was somewhat controversial, as he was born in the United States and represented them abroad through the 2015 World Championships, thereafter switching to Mexico on the basis of his dual nationality. Far more controversial, however, was Liz Swaney, who became Hungary’s first freestyle skier by taking part in the women’s halfpipe. The American-born Swaney competed internationally for Hungary through the ancestry of her grandparents, and performed basic tricks that would ensure she finished in the top 30 competitors enough times to earn a spot at the Games. At the Olympics, she maintained her simplistic style and finished last, with opinion divided on whether she was an outsider who made her dream come true, or someone who took advantage of the system and stole a spot that might have gone to someone who had worked harder for it.