The International Olympic Committee (IOC) recently announced it will be including a new sport at the 2030 Alps: freeride skiing and snowboarding. With its inclusion, the IOC brings one of the sport’s most exciting disciplines to the world’s biggest stage. Here’s an introduction to the Olympics’ newest sport.
Big Mountain Lines and Ungroomed Terrain
Freeriding is a skiing and snowboarding discipline in which athletes ride down natural, ungroomed, and steep terrain, using the mountain as a canvas to put their creativity on display. During their runs, athletes choose their own unique routes—or lines—from the top of the mountain all the way to the bottom. There is no set course. Instead, athletes are scored on their creativity and the skills they perform as they navigate their unique runs, with no two runs being exactly alike.
Freeriding essentially takes slopestyle to the backcountry. But instead of riding a man-made terrain park designed by humans, freeriders use the features the mountain provides. They perform spins, flips, grabs, and airs using natural jumps, cliffs, and takeoffs formed entirely by Mother Nature.
Freeriding also forces athletes to deeply understand the mountain they are riding. Conditions can quickly change in the backcountry, with variations in snow depth, visibility, wind, and tracks from other riders all affecting how a line can be ridden. Once an athlete begins their run, they must constantly adapt to hazards like rocks, trees, cliffs, and even avalanche areas to maintain their control and safety, all while trying to win.
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Judging and Scoring
Unlike traditional Olympic events that are highly structured and formatted, freeriding brings a fresh dose of creative freedom. Judges will score athletes based on their creative line choice, control, fluidity, and technical style. There is no clock involved, giving athletes all the time they need to set up for turns and tricks.
Difficult, high-scoring lines can include steep terrain, narrow chutes, cliffs, and small, technical riding areas. Harder lines generally earn high scores if executed well.
Throughout the runs, judges closely watch riders for control and technique, including smooth landings, turn quality, jump execution, and stability at speed. Air and style are a large part of an athlete’s score, with cliffs and rollers giving them opportunities for spins, grabs, flips, and straight airs.
Freeride World Tour
The Freeride World Tour is widely regarded as the sport’s premier international circuit. Each winter, the world’s best freeriders travel the world, competing against each other at the best freeride destinations on the globe. Athletes earn points at each stop, and only the top-ranked riders make it to the latter half of the season after a cut. The tour makes several stops before its annual championship event, where the freeride World Champions are crowned.
The tour played a key part in freeriding’s path to the Olympics. In 2022, the International Ski and Snowboard Federation (FIS) acquired the Freeride World Tour. FIS oversees alpine and freestyle skiing and snowboarding, bringing freeriding under the same body as the sports that are already included in the Olympic Games. The FIS recognized freeriding as an official discipline in 2024, ultimately leading to its inclusion in the 2030 Olympic program.
Olympic Debut
Freeriding at the 2030 Olympics will feature four events: men’s ski, men’s snowboard, women’s ski, and women’s snowboard. A total of 44 elite riders—22 men and 22 women—will get the chance to compete for an Olympic medal for the first time in freeride history. Freeriding at the Olympics feeds directly into a broader milestone for the Alpes 2030 Games, which the IOC notes will make history as the very first Winter Olympics to achieve total 50-50 gender parity across its entire athlete quota.
Athletes to Watch
- NEW ZEALAND—Benjamin James Richards, Men’s Ski: 2026 Freeride World Tour World Champion
- FRANCE—Lou Barin, Women’s Ski: 2026 Freeride World Tour World Champion
- FRANCE—Victor de Le Rou, Men’s Snowboard: 2026 Freeride World Tour World Champion
- U.S.A—Mia Jones, Women’s Snowboard: 2026 Freeride World Tour World Champion
