Freeride is Going to the Olympics: It Should Change Skiing Forever

Big, and I mean BIG, news hit the ski world yesterday.

The IOC and the powers that be officially announced that freeride skiing and snowboarding will be Olympic events at the 2030 Games in the French Alps.

Four medals. Men's ski, women's ski, men's snowboard, women's snowboard. Forty-four athletes total. The first freeride medals ever handed out on the Olympic stage.

For those of you unfamiliar with the freeride world, let me explain how these competitions actually work. Because it's nothing like what you picture when you think "Olympic skiing."

There's no gate course. No clock. No groomed run.

Yes. This is the start gate. It is on a cliff. 

Instead, you get a natural, ungroomed mountain face — cliffs, chutes, powder, the whole mess — marked only by a start gate at the top and a finish line at the bottom. Everything in between is up to you.

You inspect the face beforehand. You pick your own line. And then you get exactly one run to lay it all down.

Judges score that run from 0 to 100 on five things: your line (how hard and creative the route you chose was), your air and style (the jumps — and remember, these are natural cliffs, not man-made kickers), your fluidity (speed and flow, no hesitation), your control, and your technique.

Pick a gnarly line and ski it clean and fast with a couple of massive airs? You win. Pick the safe route, or huck something you can't land? You lose.

One run. One shot. That's the whole sport.

Personally, I think this has the potential to grow skiing at an exponential level.

I'm talking Drive to Survive levels of growth. The Netflix show that took Formula 1 from a niche curiosity in the US to appointment viewing damn near overnight.

The reason is simple. Freeride is the epitome of adrenaline in ski and snowboard, and the US-based consumer is an adrenaline junkie.

You are literally flying down the most absurd terrain while attempting tricks.

It's no coincidence that Shaun White propelled snowboarding to the upper echelon in 2006. His fiery appearance mixed with the high stakes of the halfpipe made the event a staple of Olympic viewership. It also created thousands of new snowboarders.

In freeride, the stakes are even higher.

The jumps are off cliffs. The landings are ungroomed. The difficulty is off the charts. You're throwing halfpipe-caliber tricks off the back of the mountain, on terrain nobody smoothed out for you.

This is what the "course" looks like from the bottom. It's just a face of the mountain, with cliffs. 

But, as insane as this aspect of skiing is, the growth it can catapult will require external support. 

It's going to take a lot of work across marketing, athlete sponsorship, and coverage of the sport.

The freeride circuit needs to be picked up by broadcasts that aren't just YouTube. And look — as much as I believe in the YouTube model, it simply won't cut it when it comes to showcasing this sport on the level it deserves. We need genuine coverage of these events.

But the most important thing? We need proper coverage of the athletes.

We need to connect to these riders. Feel their pain, their success, and all the crap in between.

That's the whole reason Drive to Survive worked. It wasn't the cars. It was the people driving them.

The good news is the pieces are already moving. FIS bought the Freeride World Tour back in 2024 and made freeride an official discipline that same year. U.S. Ski & Snowboard is bringing freeride under its national teams and will name its first athletes during the 2026–27 season — meaning the riders who'll represent Team USA in 2030 are getting picked this year. 

Four years out, and the machine is starting to spin up. 

So here's where I land. The infrastructure is coming and the talent is already here. The competition itself generates plenty of excitement so no work needed there. The biggest question mark is if brands, resorts, producers, etc. can get behind the athletes and present them as the focal point of the event. 

Through them, people can truly connect to the extreme of skiing that hooked us all in the first place. 

If done properly, Freeride won't just make it onto the Olympic stage. 

It will help bring the average American much closer to the sport of skiing.

With the right amount of investment, I believe freeride at the Olympics can grow skiing in a way we've yet to see. 

-Shai

P.S. - Want to get closer to the freeride world?

You don't have to wait until 2030 to fall in love with this sport. Here's where I'd start:

• Freeride World Tour — The pro circuit, and now the road to the Olympics. Full event replays live on the site, plus a breakdown of exactly how runs get scored.
• Natural Selection Tour — Travis Rice's invitational, and the best-looking freeride on the planet. Broadcasts live on Red Bull TV. Start here if you want to see what all the hype is about.
• IFSA — The grassroots and junior circuit across the Americas. This is where the pipeline starts — the kids competing here now are the ones who'll be chasing 2034.
• U.S. Ski & Snowboard — The new home of Team USA freeride. Follow along as they name the first-ever Olympic freeride roster this coming season.
• Alpes 2030 — The official Olympic hub. Bookmark it now and thank me in four years.