The international ski and snowboard community is experiencing a massive wave of mixed emotions following the International Olympic Committee’s announcement that big-mountain freeride skiing and snowboarding will officially debut at the Alps 2030 Winter Games in France. The decision brings a discipline that relies entirely on steep, untamed, and un-groomed mountain terrain to the world’s most structured sporting stage, allocating 44 athlete spots evenly between men and women. Instead of chasing a stopwatch on engineered courses, Olympic riders will be judged on creative line choice, fluidity, and technical style, utilizing natural cliffs and chutes as a raw canvas. While the inclusion marks the peak of a three-decade journey since the sport’s development in the 1990s which was accelerated by the International Ski and Snowboard Federation’s acquisition of the Freeride World Tour in 2022, it has ignited an intense, polarizing debate among the world’s elite riders over whether the Olympic machine will ultimately preserve or destroy the soul of freeriding.
In an article exploring the mixed reception across the community, the French media outlet Outside.fr captured the immediate division within the sport. Outside.fr reported (translated from French): “A few hours after the official entry of freeride skiing and snowboarding into the program of the 2030 Winter Olympic Games, enthusiasm is high. It is ‘a historic recognition,’ ‘a huge privilege,’ and ‘incredible news’ for a discipline that has long remained apart from sports institutions, praise Marion Haerty, Lou Barin, and Victor de le Rue in turn. While they all share some reservations regarding the more regulated framework imposed by Olympism, only the Italian Markus Eder has openly expressed his disappointment. For him, the discipline’s entry into the Olympics risks making it lose the freedom that has shaped freeride since its inception.”
For many competitive riders on the circuit, the Olympic spotlight represents a massive leap forward for a sport that historically existed on the absolute margins of the mainstream athletic establishment. French skier Lou Barin, a former 2018 slopestyle Olympian who won on the Freeride World Tour in her rookie season, told Outside.fr that the news is a beautiful evolution that changes the game for the next generation, bringing unprecedented media visibility, new participating countries, and fresh financial support. Four-time freeride snowboard world champion Marion Haerty echoed this sentiment to the French outlet, calling it a deeply moving milestone of historical recognition for the athletes, brands, and organizers who built the culture. Five-time world champion Victor De Le Rue added that the move gives instant, widespread credibility to their achievements, noting that the general public will finally understand what a world title actually means, while national federations will unlock new funding to help younger riders train and progress. This competitive stoke is shared by rising freeriders like Marcus Goguen, who took to Instagram to express his motivation, noting that his family grew up as ski racers and his uncle, Thomas Grandi, made it to the Olympics and was inducted into the Canadian Ski Hall of Fame. Goguen noted he is incredibly grateful for the opportunity to follow those footsteps, even if big-mountain riding is considered the “dark side” of the traditional ski racing world, maintaining that a sport this unique and gnarly making it to the big stage is genuinely special.
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Yet, underneath the optimism lies a deep-seated anxiety that the highly regulated, corporate nature of the Olympics will sanitize a sport built entirely on rebellion and creative independence. Even the athletes celebrating the news have expressed lingering fears. Barin admitted to Outside.fr that she worries the sport might get overly softened or burdened by overly complicated rules in the name of safety, though she maintains faith that Freeride World Tour CEO Nicolas Hale-Woods will keep a firm grip on the format to prevent a subpar show. De Le Rue similarly warned that if the selected mountain faces are made less engaging or restricted due to strict safety boundaries, the sport itself will suffer, stating quite frankly that “when everything becomes a bit too boxy, it’s a bit less rock ‘n’ roll.” This cultural defense was reinforced by prominent rider Kye Petersen, who commented on Instagram that if the sport is going to have contests on this scale, they absolutely must be run by people who are genuinely involved in the actual sport and culture.
The criticism turns outright fierce among some of the sport’s most legendary icons, who view the institutionalization of freeride as a direct threat to its core identity. Freeride titan Sammy Carlson launched a blunt critique on Instagram, stating outright that the true essence of freeride will never exist in a contest environment. Carlson, who famously walked away from slopestyle competition at the top of his game right when it became an Olympic sport, pointed out that ten years later, the money has nearly dried up for the athletes competing at the highest level while the governing federations pocket major profits. He argued that the Olympics actually needed action sports to boost their broadcast ratings far more than the action sports community ever needed the Games, adding that he hates to see the FIS and IOC profit from a culture they had no hand in building. Italian champion Markus Eder, who competed in slopestyle at the 2014 Sochi Games before shifting to big-mountain riding, was the most openly disappointed athlete to speak out. Eder told Outside.fr that freeride was specifically created to break free from competitive ski racing and Olympism, stating that he loved the fact that outsiders didn’t understand it because the sport belonged entirely to their tight-knit family of riders. He warned that entering the Olympic system strips away freedom, making riders entirely dependent on national sports federations — recalling his own past trauma of being kicked out of the Italian federation during his slopestyle career and having to fight them in court. Eder lamented that decisions regarding freeride will now be handed over to bureaucratic officials who do not truly know the mountains, asking why the community constantly feels the need to chase more size and validation at the cost of sacrificing their raw essence for a single month of glory every four years. Ultimately, the arrival of 2030 will likely split the sport down cultural lines; as Carlson summarized, while a new generation will eagerly chase Olympic medals, plenty of purists will continue to carve their own independent paths with no start gates, coaches, or judges in sight.
Photo: Jeremy Bernard, 2016 FWT, Haines, AK.