Freeride Skiing Could Become an Olympic Sport- Is That a Good Thing?

Well, folks, it's happening. Or, more precisely, could be happening.

Since the International Ski and Snowboard Federation's (FIS) acquisition of the Freeride World Tour (FWT), another concrete step has been made towards a potential Olympic freeride event.

Earlier this summer, FIS congress members voted to make freeride skiing and snowboarding an officially recognized discipline.

The landmark decision establishes freeride alongside the other sports overseen by the FIS. Now, at least on paper, alpine racing and freeride are part of the same category.

Nothing's going to happen fast. A member of the FWT team told me that if freeride makes it to the Olympics, it would probably be in 2030 at the earliest, and the recognition doesn't guarantee an Olympic appearance. However, the needle now points toward a future Olympic freeride event, which begs the question: is that a good thing for the sport?

When I started competitive freeride skiing as a grom, it was, for lack of a better term, frumpy. At the youth events I attended, there was a relaxed, community feel to the whole thing. It was kind of like a beer league for kids, minus the beer.

Yes, some parents got way into it—'Come on , Jeremy! You're better than that!'—and several kids I competed against went on to become professional skiers. Yes, it was intense, and I often felt like puking before I dropped in. But there was a closeness to it. The world was small. There I was, nothing extraordinary on skis, yet rubbing elbows with future greats. When I tagged along to FWT qualifying events in college, the vibe was similar, even as the level of competition was rapidly increasing.

That's unique in a sport that involves world-class athletics. I'm not super familiar with the inner workings of football or basketball, but I imagine that when Lebron James turned 18, he was probably whisked off by jet to attend exclusive training camps, spending the rest of his basketball years inside walled gardens, only reappearing at press conferences and in TV advertisements. After an NBA game, Lebron doesn't wander off the court to guzzle a few pints at a local bar and chat with the occasional fan.

The promise of freeride skiing becoming an Olympic sport nudges it away from that oddball combination of athletic intensity and counter-culture tendencies. Should it join the Olympics, a smattering of policies, point systems, and guidelines will likely descend.

I'm imagining training camps and U.S. Ski Team qualifying procedures—the works. Kids will practically be grown in freeride labs to make them future Olympians. During this shift, something difficult to pin down might be lost. Call it "soul," and maybe throw the word "core" in for good measure. But this much has to be true: freeride will look different.

Freeriding and other similar sports have long had a complicated relationship with organized competition. The drug tests and thick rulebooks associated with Olympic events are fundamentally at odds with freeride's origins, which, as a sub-discipline, emerged to provide skiers a way to sidestep the rigidity associated with racing or moguls while playing on natural, unmanicured faces.

Think of Shane McConkey. Then think of a large governing body like the FIS running G.N.A.R., or, more absurdly, G.N.A.R. becoming an Olympic sport. There will always be a lingering disconnect, and some part of the freeride crowd will never be sold. "It's called free ride for a reason," they might say.

Park skiing, which first appeared at the Winter Olympics in 2014, has already been through this. The strangeness of slopestyle joining stodgier disciplines like alpine racing and ski jumping was perhaps best captured by Henrik Harlaut, who finished each of his Olympic slopestyle runs with his ski pants sagged well below his belt line.

Mainstream news outlets had a hilariously difficult time with him and his ilk. "I think the president of the [International Olympic Committee] should be Johnny Knoxville, because basically, this stuff is just 'Jack*ss' stuff that they invented and called Olympic sports," sportscaster Bob Costas said on NBC.

Ten years later, park skiing is jostling against the rigidity imposed by the IOC and FIS. "Going to my second Olympics, I wasn't really that motivated in the first place because it's getting more and more similar, especially in the competition scene," explained professional freeskier Ferdinand Dahl in a soundbite for The League , a documentary highlighting Jib League, an alternative freeskiing competition series led by Dahl and others. "We're kinda, in my eyes, being pushed into a mold that this sport, as a whole, doesn't really fit into."

Freeride may follow a similar path, with athletes eventually deciding to host their own events celebrating the sport's roots: a few gals and guys throwing down in a loose, disorganized format. But the Olympics aren't just about trying to shove a square peg into a round hole.

When the news of the FIS recognition broke, the FWT noted it expects that putting freeride on the global stage will draw more support and resources, creating new opportunities for athletes.

Increased attention, too, is presumably part of the play, and in the sports media world, attention means money. It's no secret that competitive freeride, and freeskiing generally, aren't the most lucrative career paths. Going mainstream presents a chance to alter that because, without a large audience, the financial stability athletes deserve for putting life and limb on the line will never come.

Olympic bids are calculated gambles for action sports that blur the line between athletics and art. Here, freeride could lose some of its wildness and rawness, with the potential for greater athlete support in return. As freeskiing's various disciplines grew older and more established, these kinds of trades were inevitable, and the hope is, this time around, it'll benefit those who really matter: the athletes and dedicated event organizers who've been keeping the sport alive since the 1990s. I know who I'm rooting for.

Related: People of Powder: Ella Boyd

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