Freestyle and freeride skiing

Difference between freestyle and freeride skiing

Freestyle skiing and freeride skiing is not the same! Even if they are not incompatible, they are not practiced under the same conditions and their purpose is quite different.
These are in fact two disciplines of skiing, two different practices that emerged several decades ago but were made popular more recently in the 1990s and 2000s.

Freestyle skiing

Freestyle skiing is an acrobatic practice of skiing. The skier will make tricks thanks to snow modules. These modules are used to propel themselves through the air and perform a jump. Freestyle skiing can also be practiced on modules placed on the ground such as boxes, rails or other street furniture to slide on the surface of these elements or adhere to them temporarily.

Here's for the very abstract explanation of freestyle skiing. In other words, freestyle skiing is practiced in the snowparks found in most ski resorts. The freestyler (the skier who practices freestyle skiing therefore) performs tricks using jumps but also rails and boxes.

Freestyler will also use natural movements or obstacles encountered on the track to perform tricks, so freestyle skiing is not only limited to a delimited area like the snowpark but can be practiced anywhere in the mountains or even on rails in the middle of the city.

Most freestyle tricks consist of rotations associated with grabs. For example, a turn on oneself on the vertical axis is called a 360 (or formerly a helicopter). It is therefore easy to guess the names of the figures because it represents the number of degrees of rotation: a 180 is a half turn. There are also rotations in the horizontal axis such as front flip or back flip.

Of course the figures are not limited to these rotations alone. There are many more. Grab is the action of grabbing with the hand of a part of his or her skis, front at the back or under the shoe.

Note that some figures are performed "in reverse", freestyle skis have a second spatula at the back of the skis.

The emblematic competitions of freestyle skiing include the Winter X Games with the disciplines of Big Air (a jump), slopestyle (course consisting of ramps, modules, rails, etc.), halfpipe (or superpipe) consisting of two walls of snow that opposes and forms a half tube of snow.

Freeride skiing

Freeride skiing consists of skiing off the slopes and usually in powder snow. If in addition the descent is embellished with a few rock bars to jump or ground movements conducive to a few jumps, we are right in the practice freeride.

In short, freeride skiing is off-piste skiing. But the term freeride ski is not used as much as before because it is a bit stuffy and also because the practice of freeride skiing has segmented. There is now the back country ski which is freestyle skiing practiced off piste, freeride skiing which is pure off-piste skiing with no tricks or few figures, ski touring, which is necessarily practiced off the slopes.

The emblematic competition of freeride skiing is the Freeride World Tour, during the season about thirty skiers is brought to compare themselves on half a dozen steep slopes and powder snow. Skiers are judged on their style, speed, fluidity and to a lesser extent the jumps.

At the crossroads of practices: backcountry skiing

The mix of freestyle and freeride skiing has given birth to backcountry skiing: the skier makes a freeride ski descent by doing freestyle skiing tricks.

Dangers Abound 

When skiers compete in the Freeride World Tour, they have to wear a helmet, backpack with probe and shovel, back protector and transceiver.” Some skiers even don backpacks with airbags despite the added weight. To manage the risk of getting caught in an avalanche, freeride skiers check the temperature and weather before hitting the backcountry. In January 2012, freestyle skier Sarah Burke, a four-time Olympic gold medalist, died while training in Utah. Despite safety procedures for freestyle skiing promulgated by the Federation Internationale de Ski, the world governing body, people who engage in extreme sports take a calculated risk.

Advice expert

The best advice is to get professional instruction in the sport, follow safety protocols and wear protective equipment, especially a helmet.

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