FIS Recognizes Freeride Snowboarding as Official Discipline

A few days ago at the 55th Annual Ski Congress held in Iceland, FIS, the International Ski and Snowboard Federation, the governing body of snowboarding for the Olympics, announced its recognition of "freeride" as an official snowboarding and skiing discipline.

This follows the 2022 acquisition by FIS of the Freeride World Tour, an obvious harbinger of this announcement. When FIS acquired the FWT, the only plausible reason for this was to move toward the potential future inclusion of freeride snowboarding and skiing in the Olympics and with this latest announcement, the path forward continues to be set.

Of course, this is just logical speculation, but it makes sense, no?

Snowboarding's relationship with FIS is complex. Without a doubt, the Olympics provide a massive platform for riders and the benefits of winning Olympic medals are hard-earned, well-deserved, and can have lasting, life-altering effects. Olympic medalist riders are immediate diplomats of the sport to an enormous audience and folks like Red Gerard, Jamie Anderson, Mark McMorris, Sage Kotsenburg, Zoi Sadowski-Synnott, Anna Gasser, and Kokomo Murase (among others) are incredible ambassadors, upending the classic contrived "gnarly dude," 2-dimensional understanding of snowboarding that has often been foisted upon the sport for the multi-faceted realities of the talent, discipline, and passion required to excel at the highest level.

Moreover, the organizations that work with the FIS, like US Ski and Snowboard, provide a competition-based pathway for up-and-coming riders and aspiring pros. From local USASA contests to Rev Tour and Grand Prix events, so many established professionals have risen through the ranks of these competitions and continue to do so year after year. The Crystal Globes are prized recognition from riders; this year, Mia Brookes, Mitsuki Ono, and Valentino Guseli were among the individuals who took home the award while also dominating competition in many other arenas (Mia in Super Streetstyle at Dew Tour and Val as the 2024 World Quarterpipe Champion, for example). These feats are all incredibly impressive and earned by these riders' unbridled dedication to their riding.

But there are challenges that bog down a more equanimous relationship between FIS and the rest of snowboarding—even just contest snowboard. To boil down a complex situation very, and perhaps overly, simply: Competing in FIS events is important to many competitors because there is opportunity not only to compete in the Olympics, but for general upward career mobility. But, there are contests that are also important to competitors--and to snowboarding, at large--like X Games, for example, that are not part of FIS. Scheduling of FIS events often conflicts with other important events (see: 2023 Dew Tour), which forces athletes to deal with challenging/exhausting travel schedules and to choose between contests that are each no-less impactful to their careers. When situations arise that pit contest schedules against one another, the riders can't win. And snowboarding in general suffers because the best riders are split up, there's no clear way for the audience to follow, and the incredible feats of slopestyle, big air, and halfpipe--so much of which are, at this point, dangerous--often do not get the recognition they deserve.

In as so much as this two-sided coin exists, there hasn't been any inkling of a way forward when it comes to the traditional competitive disciplines of halfpipe, slopestyle, and big air. But specifically looking at freeriding in snowboarding, this is an arena that exists in opposition to the traditional contest circuit. Historically, competing in slopestyle and/or halfpipe was often the precursor to amassing the support and resources to depart from the painted lanes of competition and enjoy the freedom and creativity of the backcountry. Many riders (Mikkel Bang, Elena Hight, Torstein Horgmo, Jamie Anderson, for just a few examples) had incredibly successful traditional contest careers before expanding on their canons off piste.

Nearly exclusively, backcountry and freeriding exploits have been situated squarely in the center of filming in snowboarding's scope. It is there that there are no bounds that restraing the creative and exploratory aspects of snowboarding (other than Mother Nature, herself)--the art verses the sport in a sense. (It goes without saying that knowledge, experience, patience, understanding, and education are a big part of this type of snowboarding, too. This is a reason that it often occurs later in riders' careers (experience and resources), though new opportunities are affecting that trajectory and giving opportunity to more riders.)

Two of these new opportunities are the two main entities that blend backcountry and contest: Freeride World Tour and Natural Selection—though both in different ways. The inherent foundation of big mountain competition is the alpine setting and just in that sense, FWT and NST are very different animals in their own rights due to their locations and terrain aesthetics. Beyond that, the two events are different in even the particular genre of snowboarding, so they're incredibly individual.

Both FWT and NST have provided opportunities, exposure, and resources to grow in backcountry and big mountain terrain to established pros and up-and-comers, but blending competition into the fold in off-piste arenas is a massive undertaking. Both when it comes to conditions and just as importantly, driving philosophy.

But back to the news. The press release from FIS announcing the inclusion of freeride snowboarding as a discipline explains:

“This is an important day for the freeride community. The recognition of Freeride Skiing and Snowboarding as an official discipline within FIS will elevate the sport and provide new opportunities for athletes worldwide. We are excited about the future prospects this brings to the freeride movement and beyond.” – Nicolas Hale-Woods, Founder and CEO of FWT.

It continues to say:

Following this recognition, Freeride Skiing and Snowboarding will undergo a voting process within individual National Ski Associations worldwide. This step emphasizes grassroots development, ensuring the sport gains widespread support and that young athletes have the resources needed to excel.

The Freeride World Championships will now be included within the FIS framework, paving the way for a structured and unified approach to competitions and athlete development.

This is interesting. One, if more resources were available and provided to riders looking to get into the backcountry, that sounds great. But what does that look like? Does this further a specialization that is detrimental to the idea of an all-around rider? What does grassroots development look like when it comes to the backcountry? Research & Development provided backcountry development for a group of snowboarders this past winter and that was exceptional. But importantly, that was run by riders for riders--a meaningful investment in the community that reverberates strongest.

A marker in the trail has been set by FIS. They see opportunity in bringing freeriding to the Olympics. How will this play out in the next few years? How will this translate to a mainstream audience? How will it affect ranks of pro snowboarders for whom the Olympic pipeline was not in their purview? We wait and see.