Freeski big air World Cup season preview 2024/25
Oct 16, 2024·Freeski Park & Pipe)
The 2024/25 FIS Park & Pipe big air season gets underway this weekend at the Big Air Chur, where we can once again expect an explosive two-day celebration of music, art and the world’s very finest big air snowboarders and freeskiers sending it large in Graubunden’s capital city.
Chur will be the first of what is shaping up to be the biggest big air season in World Cup history, with five competitions on the calendar for snowboard, and six lined up for freeski, taking us to Europe, Asia and North America.
With those stops showing off an exciting mix of classic and fresh venues on this season’s World Cup tour, the fact that the qualification period for the Milano-Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games is now in swing, and with the Engadin-St. Moritz 2025 World Championships looming as the final Park & Pipe event of the season in March, there’s plenty to be hyped about this winter.
Read on for a deeper dive on what to look forward to on the big jump in 2024/25…
VENUES
BIG AIR CHUR (SUI): 18-19 OCT, 2024
The jumping off point of the World Cup big air season for the fourth year running, the Big Air Chur festival is a true highlight of not just the Park & Pipe calendar but, really, the entire FIS calendar across all disciplines and levels.
No where else, on any of the FIS World Cup competition calendars, can you find a event with a top level music festival running alongside one of our competitions. Big Air Chur is where snowsports and culture come together in one place for a weekend-long celebration of shred, and we can’t wait to be back on the scene this season to experience it once again.
BEIJING (CHN): 29 NOV-01 DEC, 2024
The world’s first, best and only permanent big air structure gets another workout this season, as we return to the iconic site of the Beijing 2022 Olympic Winter Games BA competition for World Cup action for the fourth time.
Love it or hate it, there’s no denying that the Beijing big air venue forces you to stand up and take notice, with the massive vent stacks of the former steel production facility that once called Shougang Park home looming over the massive big air ramp.
If you took a minute to talk to the athletes, you would find out that ‘love it’ is the almost unanimous opinion of the venue in Beijing, with unparalleled quality of the jump there allowing for some of the gnarliest big air competitions the world has ever seen. Simply put, Beijing allows the best to show their best, and this season’s event promises to once again reset the standard for what is possible in a big jump showdown.
BIG AIR KLAGENFURT (AUT): 03-05 JAN, 2025
We’ll be ringing in the New Year with a new venue, as the first competition of the 2025 calendar year will being us to the Austrian city of Klagenfurt for the one and only stadium big air event of the season.
The capital of Carinthia (Anna Gasser’s home state) and the sixth-largest city in Austria, Klagenfurt is known for its Renaissance architecture, lakeside setting, and some spooky legends about about the origins of its peculiar place name.
Come this January, however, Klagenfurt should come to be known in shred circles as the home of one of the World Cup’s most exciting new events, with the freeski and snowboard big air World Cups taking over Wörthersse Stadium on the first Friday and Saturday of 2025, with each competition followed at night by some hype-inducing musical performers. Big looking forward to this one.
KREISCHBERG (AUT): 09-11 JAN, 2025
The Austrian tour to open the new year continues on in Kreischberg, the home of the 2015 Snowboard, Freestyle and Freeski World Championships and a FIS Snowboard World Cup venue dating all the way back to the 1996/97 season (!!).
With a big ol’ on-piste jump, set up right at the base of the resort, Kreischberg always delivers an exceptional show, and a laundry list of the world’s best riders of the past three decades have earned themselves a Kreischberg podium at one time or the other. Kreischberg has proven time and again to be one of Europe’s finest Park & Pipe World Cup venues, and we’re hyped to be back again this season.
VISA BIG AIR ASPEN (USA): 30 JAN-06 FEB, 2025
After the Austrian big air swing we head stateside for what is shaping up to be the biggest week in FIS Park & Pipe World Cup history at the Aspen’s legendary Buttermilk resort.
No resort in the 21-year history of the FIS Freeski World Cup has stepped up to host slopestyle, big air and halfpipe World Cup competitions for freeski and snowboard in the same week, but this winter Aspen is taking on the challenge, and we cannot wait to see how it all goes down at one of the world’s preeminent ski resorts.
The 2024/25 snowboard big air World Cup will be wrapping up there in Aspen, with the crystal globes going out to the season’s top riders. However, for the freeskiers there will be one more BA stop on the World Cup calendar…
TIGNES MOUNTAIN SHAKER (FRA): 11-14 MAR, 2025
Once again the freeski big air World Cup season will wrap up in France’s iconic Tignes resort - the longest-running venue in FIS Freestyle history.
An on-piste jump at the base of the resort, nighttime competition, the incredible Tignes backdrop, crystal globes going out, and the always insane French crowd on hand to cheer it all on? Sounds like a good time to us.
ENGADIN-ST. MORITZ 2025 FIS SNOWBOARD, FREESTYLE AND FREESKI WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS: 16-30 MAR, 2025
The 2024/25 FIS Park & Pipe season will be coming to a close at the biggest event of the winter, with the full slate of SB/FS/FK events hitting the famed Engadin valley at the end of March. We’ll have plenty more on this one in the build up, but rest assured we’re very much looking forward to bringing our 2025 World Championships to the world from one of the most famed ski regions anywhere on earth.
WHO TO WATCH - WOMEN
Leading the way in last season’s big air World Cup was the one and only Mathilde Gremaud of Switzerland, as the 24-year-old became the first freeskier in World Cup history to claim three crystal globes in the same season when she took home big air, slopestyle and the Freeski overall titles.
Gremaud claimed podiums in nine-of-nine World Cup starts last season, including six victories, and at this point she’s really only rivalled by Eileen Gu in terms of her ability to assert her elite talent at every single competition she drops in on.
Speaking of Eileen Gu…while we don’t expect to see her on scene at too many BA events this season, it’s important to remember that she is the reigning Olympic gold medallist in the event, and clearly more than capable of dropping a big jump hammers when the time so requires it.
Someone we do expect to see a lot of this big air season is France’s Tess Ledeux. Second in all-time FIS Freeski World Cup victories behind only Gu, Ledeux is a two-time big air crystal globe winner and the only two-time big air World Champion in FIS Freeski history, including last time around at Bakuriani 2023.
With Gu sitting at 15 career World Cup wins, Ledeux at 14, and Gremaud sneaking up behind with 13, we’re truly witnessing a golden age of women’s freeskiing right before our eyes. The battle between these three to see who’s holding the all-time record by season end will be one of the most compelling storylines of the 2024/25 World Cup campaign.
One of the wildcards this season will be Canada’s Megan Oldham, who sat out much of the World Cup action in 2023/24, but made history at the X Games when she became the first female skier to stomp a triple cork on her way to big air gold there. How many World Cup competitions she suits up for is still to-be-determined, but when she does drop in, everyone had best pay attention.
Also to watch out for this season will be rising star Flora Tabanelli (ITA), as the 16-year-old rolls into this season as a two-time reigning Junior World Champion and 2023 Youth Olympic Games gold medallist in the event. Tabanelli locked in both of the first two World Cup podiums of her young career last season in big air competition, and very much appears to be on her way to world domination in the event in the very near future.
WHO TO WATCH - MEN
Last season’s top dawg on the men’s side of things was the USA’s Alex Hall, who finally added a crystal globe to what was already one of the most impressive trophy shelves in all of freeskiing. Along with his big air globe, Hall also finished second overall on both the slopestyle and the Freeski overall standings, making for the best start-to-finish World Cup season of his career.
Following up A-Hall on the big air rankings was Switzerland’s Andri Ragettli, making for the strongest finish on the BA overall list for the 26-year-old since the 2018/19 season. With 31 career podiums, Ragettli comes into 2024/25 well atop the all-time FIS Freeski rankings in that metric, and should be counted on to add a few more tallies to that number this season.
Third overall was the elder of the flying Tabanelli siblings, as 19-year-old Miro put together the best campaign of his young career in 2023/24, including his first career World Cup podium at Copper Mountain.
While he struggled last season in World Cup competition, reigning big air World Champion Troy Podmilsak (USA) stepped up at the biggest competition of last season to claim X Games big air gold, and has done more than enough to prove his place as one of the most explosive big air skiers on the planet.
However, the men’s big air field is outrageously strong, and beyond last season’s top-3 and the Podmilsak, you’ll find likes of Birk Ruud (NOR), Mac Forehand (USA), Matej Svancer (AUT), Max Moffat (CAN), Lukas Muellauer (AUT), Leo Landroe (NOR), Luca Harrington (NZL) and on down the line.
Ruud in particular will be one to keep an eye on, as the 24-year-old sits in a tie with Tess Ledeux for second on the all-time FIS Freeski wins list with fourteen.
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