FIS Freestyle Skiing, Snowboard & Freeski Update

The Committee for Snowboard, Freestyle, and Freeski convened with much to discuss following a highly successful 2017/18 season and an important 2018/19 season getting underway in the Southern Hemisphere in just a few short months. 

Remaining at the forefront of discussions were the continued efforts towards harmonisation of the shared freestyle/freeski, and snowboard events and venues: halfpipe, slopestyle, big air and cross - and how to further improve all facets of competitions within a relatively new governing structure joining the disciplines. In addition, the approval of some significant rule changes in moguls and aerials skiing promise to bring fresh excitement to the vanguard freestyle events.

Key Decisions:
General:

• Continue the strong work of harmonisation between ski & snowboard in halfpipe, slopestyle, and big air, and building the shared vision for cross events.
• Implementation of a new International Competition Rulebook combined for FS, FK & SB instead of two separate books, with the new single edition’s structure making the rulebook more user-friendly.

Ski and snowboard cross:

• Formation of a shared cross advisory group to develop common principles for both ski and snowboard cross
• Adaptation of the ski cross suit specification rules from the 2018/19 season, with the look and feel significantly more relaxed.

Moguls and aerials:

• Revision in degree-of-difficulty scoring for moguls skiing introducing a category of jumps with grabs, implemented the intention of exhibiting a larger variety of tricks 
• Revision in degree-of-difficulty scoring for ladies’ aerials with increased reward for triple flips to exhibit a larger variety of jumps
• New aerials competition format for the Olympic Winter Games 2022 with two rounds of 12 athletes, taking the best scores from either of the two rounds to qualify for the final with one round of jumps.

Freeski and snowboard park & pipe:

• Harmonisation of rules for freeski that will see qualification results count as final results, in the case of cancellation of finals. 
• Process of reducing the quota for the freeski and snowboard events, in order to limit field sizes and increase quality of events.