Top 10 FIS Freestyle moments of 2017

2017 was a year to remember on the FIS Freestyle World Cup tour, and as the clock counts down towards 2018 we're taking the time to look back at some of the greatest moments, performances, and storylines of the past 365 days. Enjoy the list, and happy New Year!

MIKAEL KINGSBURY EARNS RECORD TEN-STRAIGHT WINS…AND COUNTING

In a story that is ongoing as the calendar turns over to 2018, Canadian mogul magician Mikael Kingsbury is riding the greatest wave of World Cup success ever recorded on the men’s tour, with ten straight victories (and counting) dating back to last season.

While the previous record of seven consecutive wins was set by Kingsbury himself twice before, his current string has some people looking forward to the all-time moguls mark of 16 straight wins that was set by the USA’s Hannah Kearney over portions of three seasons from 2010/11 to 2012/13.

While there’s much work to be done for Kingsbury to approach Kearney’s nearly unfathomable mark, this story remains one to watch as we head into the new year. For the 25-year-old skier who has claimed the most moguls victories of any man in World Cup history, and who is coming off his sixth straight season of winning both the moguls and Freestyle overall crystal globes, it seems that anything is possible.

SWEDISH SKI CROSS GOLD MEDAL SWEEP IN SIERRA NEVADA 2017

After seeing three-time ski cross crystal globe winner, Sochi 2014 Olympic bronze medallist, and team leader Anna Holmlund seriously injured in a training accident in late December of 2016 that would leave her in an extended coma and definitively unable to ever return to competition even after she regained consciousness, you wouldn’t blame the Swedish ski cross team for being disheartened as they continued on with last season’s World Cup campaign.

However, in one of the purest stories of resilience witnessed in skiing in 2017, the Swedish team was able come together, soldier on, and end the season in triumph at the Sierra Nevada 2017 FIS Freestyle Ski and Snowboard World Championships, with Sandra Naeslund and Victor Oehling Norberg stepping up in the tough Sierra Nevada conditions to sweep the ski cross gold medals in inspiring fashion.

ASHLEY CALDWELL FIRST TO LAND “THE DADDY” IN COMPETITION

In what was perhaps the most impressive 12 seconds of freestyle skiing in all of 2017, the USA’s Ashley Caldwell became the first ladies aerial skier to land a quadruple twisting triple backflip - the full, double full, full that’s known within aerials circles as “The Daddy” - in competition to take gold at the Sierra Nevada 2017 world championships.

To simply ski away from such a monumental trick was in and of itself an incredible achievement. However, to do it as Caldwell did - dropping in last for the final jump of a world championship competition with a gold medal on the line - is the stuff of legends, and puts the vivacious 24-year-old’s name in the history books with the greats of the sport. And if you consider that just a few years ago it looked like a series of injuries might force Caldwell into a premature retirement…well, one begins to run out of superlatives, don’t they?

MARIE MARTINOD WINS SECOND HALFPIPE CRYSTAL GLOBE 13 YEARS AFTER FIRST

More than 13 years ago, in 2003/04, a 19-year-old skier from France named Marie Martinod won three out of three World Cup halfpipe contests on the season to take the first-ever FIS Freestyle halfpipe crystal globe, only to retire from World Cup competition the next year in order to have a baby and focus on motherhood.

However in 2013/14, a decade after her last World Cup competition, she was back on the scene, slowly reasserting her place amongst the world’s elite and building up her tricks until this past season where she claimed three victories, a third place result and, incredibly, the second crystal globe of her career - all at the ripe old age of 32 years old. Throw in a silver medal at the Sierra Nevada 2017 world championships and you’ve got quite the season for one of the halfpipe tour’s elder stateswomen.

Now with already two podiums to start 2017/18 (including a win at Copper Mountain a few weeks ago), Martinod has established herself as perhaps the favourite for gold at the PyeognChang 2018 Olympic Winter Games as she continues to write the story that seemed finished for so many years.

IKUMA HORISHIMA FIRST MAN TO TAKE DOUBLE MOGULS WORLD CHAMPS GOLD AT SIERRA NEVADA 2017

Relatively unheralded before stepping into the singles moguls start gate at the Sierra Nevada 2017 world championships, with just one World Cup podium to his name, Japan’s Ikuma Horishima would leave the biggest stage of the 2016/17 season with his name written into the history books as the first male moguls skier to win double moguls world championships gold, after facing down all comers in both the single and dual moguls competition with a ferocious display of skiing.

Whether the performance will translate into a making Horishima a more consistent World Cup threat remains to be seen. However, you had better believe his big-stage acumen has the rest of the field worried as we head towards the PyeongChang 2018 Olympic Winter Games in February.

DAHLSTROM AND HARLAUT TAKE FIRST EVER BIG AIR CRYSTAL GLOBES

The 2016/17 season saw the first full FIS Freestyle Skiing World Cup programme for big air competition, with six contests on the season beginning in El Colorado (CHI), finishing with back-to-back events Voss-Myrkdalen (NOR), and featuring three city event in between, in Milan (ITA), Moenchengladbach (GER), and Quebec City (CAN).

Come time for the first-ever big air crystal globes to be awarded after the final contest in Voss-Myrkdalen it would be a pair of Swedes hoisting the season trophies, with Emma Dahlstrom’s three victories and five total podiums, and Henrik Harlaut’s two victories and six-straight top-10s dominating the respective ladies’ and men’s big air World Cup season series.

CHINA’S LADIES SWEEPS OLYMPIC TEST AERIALS PODIUM AT PHOENIX PARK

With the start of the PyeongChang 2018 Olympic Winter Games just over a month away, now might be a good time to remember some of the freestyle skiing epicness that has already graced the slopes of the Freestyle Olympic venue at Phoenix Park.

While a groundbreaking slopestyle set-up, towering ski cross track, pristine pipe, and picture-perfect moguls piste all lent themselves to some truly enticing competition in the lead-up test events, the Chinese aerials ladies provided us with the standout result of all those competitions, with Xu Mengtao, Shen Xiaoxue, and Yang Yu going 1-2-3 last year on the site where the Chinese will be looking to return to gold medal form in just a few weeks from now.

MCRAE WILLIAMS TAKES SLOPESTYLE GLOBE AND WORLD CHAMPS GOLD

To stand out on a US men’s slopestyle team that boasts so many of the top names in game is no easy task, especially after a sweep of the Sochi 2014 Olympic podium by Joss Christensen, Nicholas Goepper, and Gus Kenworthy put those three athletes so firmly at the forefront of the squad.

However, in 2016/17, 27-year-old Mcrae Williams was able to assert himself in impressive fashion, needing just two stellar performances to take the season’s slopestyle crystal globe, and then putting down a stunning final run in difficult conditions at the Sierra Nevada 2017 world championships to take the gold medal and become the first slopestyle athlete to walk away with both those pieces of hardware in the same season.

JEAN FREDERIC CHAPUIS EARNS THIRD STRAIGHT SKI CROSS TITLE

There is perhaps no tour under the FIS Freestyle umbrella that is as unpredictable, as hotly-contested, or as difficult to excel in than the men’s Audi FIS Ski Cross World Cup tour, where a combination of parity in athlete skill, variable course layouts, number of competitions, and out-and-out luck can conspire to humble even the most skilled skier over the course of a season.

All of which makes Frenchman Jean Frederic Chapuis’ of three-straight crystal globe wins from 2014/15 to 2016/17 as remarkable a streak as any we have seen in Freestyle in recent memory.

After winning the Sochi 2014 Olympic gold medal in a French sweep, Chapuis went on to record  podiums in 20 of his next 40 competitions over the next three seasons to become the first man to win the ski cross World Cup title three years running, putting himself behind only the great Tomas Kraus’s (CZE) four career globes for most all-time when he took the 2016/17 crystal globe last March.

15-YEAR-OLD KELLY SILDARU WINS FIRST WORLD CUP OF CAREER IN CARDRONA

Estonia’s Kelly Sildaru burst on to the freeskiing competition scene at the 2016 X Games by becoming the youngest-ever gold medal winner in any sport at the event with her victory in the slopestyle competition, proving that it was no fluke by following that up with a repeat performance the next season.

Because of her age it would not be until this season that we would finaly see her on the World Cup stage, where 15 years old is the minimum age at which an athlete can compete. When she did arrive at the Cardona competition this past August, however, she would not disappoint, taking the win in her very first effort in slopestyle and then following that up just days later with a second-place result in the halfpipe.

Unfortunately for Sildaru, and for her fans around the world, she would suffer a knee injury shortly thereafter that would effectively end her season, leaving the question of ‘what might have been?’ heading into the PyeongChang 2018 Olympic Winter Games. Still, all signs point to Sildaru becoming the dominant force in ladies’ freeskiing for years to come, making her performance in Cardona a teaser of what to expect when she is healthy, back on snow, and back on a World Cup startlist.