Freeski slopestyle season preview 2022/23
Nov 15, 2022·Freeski Park & Pipe
After a blockbuster start to the season on 21 October at the Big Air Chur festival, the 2022/23 FIS Freeski World Cup gets back to action from 18-19 November with the first slopestyle competition of the winter, at the Stubai Zoo in Austria.
Stubai will be the first of six FIS Freeski slopestyle World Cup competitions to go down in 2022/23, and with the Bakuriani 2023 FIS Snowboard, Freestyle and Freeski World Championships lined up for late February it’s shaping up to be a busy winter of slopestyle action indeed.
Post-Olympic seasons are always interesting as an army of new blood joins the World Cup tour, longstanding veterans reassess their place in the competition world, and in-their-prime elite athletes look to reassert their dominance as we start a fresh four-year cycle building towards the Milano-Cortina 2026 Olympic Winter Games.
Read on as we take a look ahead at what to expect from the next four-and-a-half months of action on the FIS Freeski slopestyle World Cup tour.
WHO TO WATCH - WOMEN
Beijing 2022 gold medallist - Mathilde Gremaud (SUI)
Aspen 2021 World Champion - Eileen Gu (CHN)
2021/22 crystal globe winner - Kelly Sildaru (EST)
While she was already arguably the biggest name in freeskiing before the Beijing 2022 Olympic Winter Games, by the end of O-Show last season Eileen Gu (CHN) had established herself not just as the biggest name in snowsports, but as one of the most recognisable figures in the entire sporting world.
With two golds and a silver there in China while representing the host country, Gu’s Olympic debut performance but her on a rocketship to the sun, exposure-wise, and the 19-year-old’s incredible talents more than back up the hype.
Gu is the standard by which all other freeskiers in the women’s field are now measured. However, just when the rest of the field will once again have their opportunity to measure themselves against Gu is a question we don’t have an answer for at this point, as the freeski queen is currently enrolled at Stanford University, racking up a different kind of 90.00+ score - in between international modelling gigs and red carpet appearances.
Though we’ve heard whispers Gu will be back in the bib in the new year, at this point we don’t really know if she has solid plans to compete this season. So, it’s ‘wait and see’ on that front.
With all of the above being said, it wasn’t actually Gu who took the biggest slopestyle prize of last season, as Switzerland’s Mathilde Gremaud faced down the fierce Gu challenge to walk away with Beijing 2022 gold.
With a PyeongChang 2018 Olympic silver medal and Aspen 2021 World Championships silver medal also to her name, there are few things 22-year-old Gremaud hasn’t already accomplished in freeskiing. However, a crystal globe and a World Championships gold are still on her to-do list, and she could very well earn both of those things this season.
And then of course there’s Kelly Sildaru, Beijing 2022 bronze medallist and winner of last season’s slopestyle crystal globe and second to just Gu in the Freeski overall crystal globe battle. Sildaru earned podiums in five of six World Cup competitions entered last season, including wins in all three of her slopestyle starts, and the 20-year-old has gotten stronger and more consistent in every new season throughout her career. In fact, Sildaru has missed the podium only twice in four seasons of World Cup action, making her the closest thing to a sure-thing for the top-3 as you’re likely to find.
Others to watch out for on the women’s side include last year’s FIS Freeski World Cup third-overall finisher Tess Ledeux of France (who already has a victory this season at the Big Air Chur in October), Swiss veteran and PyeongChang 2018 gold medallist Sarah Hoefflin, rising star Kirsty Muir of Great Britain, the Canadian duo of Megan Oldham and Olivia Asselin, and Maggie Voisin and Marin Hamill of the USA.
WHO TO WATCH - MEN
Beijing 2022 gold medallist - Alex Hall (USA)
Aspen 2021 World Champion - Andri Ragettli (SUI)
2021/22 crystal globe winner - Andri Ragettli (SUI)
Already the winningest freeskier in FIS World Cup history, last winter Andri Ragettli padded those stats even further, adding four more podiums to his career totals - including three slopestyle victories - to earn his fifth career World Cup crystal globe by season’s end. The fact that the 24-year-old was able to do all that last winter after coming back from reconstructive knee surgery in March of 2021 makes his accomplishments even more impressive.
However, Ragettli was unable to hit the podium at the biggest event of the season in Beijing back in February, where instead it was the USA’s Alex Hall walking away with the gold medal after a fluid and creative standout performance that had freeski purists around the world celebrating.
Hall also claimed the fifth World Cup win of his career last season at Mammoth, finishing the World Cup season ranked third on the Freeski overall list behind overall crystal globe Birk Ruud and runner-up Ragettli, and with a World Championships bronze from Aspen 2021 he’ll be looking to improve upon in Georgia, Hall should be counted on for another outstanding season in 2022/23.
Speaking of Birk Ruud - it seems possible that the 22-year-old Norwegian is THE most talented all-around men’s freeskier on planet Earth at this point.
Last season Ruud claimed victories in three of five World Cup competitions entered, on his way the biggest globe of the season, while also winning the inaugural men’s Olympic freeski big air gold medal in Beijing.
After finishing off last season with the slopestyle win at the Silvaplana World Cup, Ruud picked up right where he left this year, starting the 2022/23 campaign with the win at the season-opener Big Air Chur back in October. A dominant force in both big air and slopestyle, Ruud is also on the cusp of becoming a podium threat in halfpipe, and he’s set to rejoin pipe competition this season after taking last winter off to focus on BA/SS. With his skillset it’s not beyond one’s imagination to see him hitting the World Cup halfpipe podium in the very near future.
(Did we mention he’s also got his eyes set on snowboard competition for the Milano-Cortina 2026 OWG? Birk Ruud is a beast and only getting better.)
The depth of talent in the men’s field in 2022/23 is outrageous, and while Hall, Ragettli and Ruud are more than worthy of the praise given, there are likely to be a dozen or more skiers on any start list capable of beating those three on any given day.
After Hall the US squad features last season’s slopestyle third-overall finisher Mac Forehand, three-time Olympic medallist Nick Goepper, Beijing 2022 big air silver medallist Colby Stevenson and rising star Troy Podmilsak - fresh off his first career World Cup podium at the Big Air Chur.
Canada’s got Max Moffat, Teal Harle and Evan McEachran, as well as their own rising star in Noah Porter-MacLennon, who finished second ahead of Podmilsak in Chur for his first career World Cup podium.
Sweden’s got reigning big air World Champion Oliwer Magnusson, Beijing 2022 slopestyle bronze medallist Jesper Tjader and living legend/Beijing 2022 big air bronze medallist Henrik Harlaut.
Progressive wunderkid Matej Svancer of Austria, style icon Thibault Magnin of Spain and his teammate Javier Lliso, Switzerland’s Fabian Boesch and Kim Gubser, Christian Nummedal and Ferdinand Dahl of Norway, Leonardo Donaggio from Italy…the list goes on and on.
EVENTS:
18-19 NOV 2022
Stubai has been the jumping off point for the FIS Freeski slopestyle World Cup season for four of the past five winters, and once again for 2022/23 one of the very best terrain parks in all of the Alps will have that honour this winter from 18-19 November.
With the Prime Park training sessions going on in Stubai from late October right up until our slopestyle World Cup competition, an early-season trip to the Stubai Zoo is on to-do list for just about everybody in the freeski world - meaning that the skiers set to drop in on the World Cup should be in fine fighting form come time for qualifications on Friday 18 Nov.
12-14 JAN 2023
After Stubai there’s bit of a lull in the slopestyle season through December before we come back with a vengeance after the holidays, with France’s Font Romeu hosting the first FIS Freeski World Cup competition of 2023 from 12-14 January and leading off a busy period of five slopestyle World Cup events over the final 2.5 months of the season.
Located in the French Pyrenees about an hour and a half from Barcelona, Font Romeu has been a World Cup host since the 2016/17 season, where a combination of dependably sunny conditions and a unique course set-up come together to create an event that’s always entertaining.
18-22 JAN 2023
The only new venue on the 2022/23 FIS Freeski calendar is a big one, as the freeskiers finally get their shot to drop in on World Cup action at what is arguably THE most important freestyle venue in all of Europe - Laax, Switzerland.
It’s been nearly seven years since Laax last hosted the European Freeski Open back in the the 2015/16 season, and the stoke is high this season as the freeskiers will be able to drop in alongside their snowboard brethren for World Cup action at the famed and formidable course on Laax’s Crap Sogn Gion mountain.
Laax simply never fails to deliver, so mark this one down on your calendars. If you know, you know. And if you don’t, you’re going to find out in January…
1-4 FEB 2023
If Laax looms largest amongst legendary freestyle venues in Europe, then it is perhaps California’s Mammoth Mountain that stands as its counterpart in North America.
This season’s set of slopestyle and halfpipe events will mark the eighth time in the past 11 years that we’ve made the pilgrimage to the Eastern Sierras to take part in the Toyota US Grand Prix, and when you factor in that Mammoth also hosts HP and SS World Cup action for both FIS Snowboard as well as FIS Freeski, you realize just how deeply ingrained the resort is the World Cup DNA.
16-18 MAR 2023
After an extended February break for the Bakuriani 2023 FIS Snowboard, Freestyle and Freeski World Championships in Georgia, we get back to slopestyle World Cup business at one of the jewels of the French Alps in Tignes.
A FIS Freestyle host since the very first season of the World Cup’s existence, Tignes has progression-first pedigree like no other resort on Earth, and with one of the best course backdrops on the whole World Cup, Tignes is shaping up to be a slopestyle highlight stop for years to come.
23-25 MARCH 2023
Set to be the host of the Engadin 2025 FIS Snowboard, Freestyle and Freeski World Championships, Silvaplana has emerged over its nearly decade-long history of hosting slopestyle World Cup competitions as perhaps the very best of any venue in all of freeski.
The Silvaplana course is always near-perfect and exciting, our SwissSki hosts are sure to make every aspect of our week there in Corvatsch an absolute pleasure, and nearly every year the culmination of an epic crystal globe battle comes down to the wire there on Silvaplana’s sunny slopes.
We can’t wait to wrap up the World Cup season there in Silvaplana once again this March.
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