How has the evolution of freestyle skiing been affected by the changes in culture?

Question

How has freestyle skiing evolved in the past 30 years?

Answer 1

It almost died out fifteen years ago. Gone were the likes of Glen Plake and Wayne Wong. Mogul comps were all about time. Then along came snowboarding.

Snowboarding is the single biggest influence on skiing in the past 15 years. Back in the day...the terrain park was off limits to 2-plankers like me and my buds. Of course we poached it, and got nabbed by Patrol, but there was no way to stop it. Then twin-tips came out, and after Mosely was told he couldn't throw the Dinner Roll by the IOC all bets were off. Last year, at a trade show, certain ski company reps were showing off some charts showing how the amount of 'boarders  has reached a plateau and how freestyle skiing has risen significantly. New riders are equal to the amount of riders switching to planks or leaving snowsports all together while twin-tip sales are going through the roof. All of that is good in my book.

The downside, in my opinion, is that many of the freestylers have an "outlaw" attitude. Snowboarding had become the norm in many places. So in order to be different (and more bad-***) more folks took up freestyle. Of course, they had to have worse manners than snowboarders. I do have to admit that the best freestylers I know are great people with very good demeanors. It seems the posers and wanna-bes are the people with a chip on their shoulders.

Ski wear has always been affected by popular fashion. I was in a Hot Topic store today and 75% of what was for sale there looked like 75% of the stuff I see most knuckledraggers and freestylers wearing at the slope. I also think since the advent of the Sony Walkman and the ability to have portable music with you on the slopes, tunes have had a great influence on skiing. In 1993 I had a 120 minute cassette mix with bands such as Ministry, Nine Inch Nails, Pearl Jam, and Social Distortion that I played over-and-over while skiing. It was loud, fast, and hard and that's how I skied. Since then, the music has become even harder and faster (to some extents) and so has the skiing.

Lastly, I think the marketing appeal of extreme sports in general has greatly contributed to the changes in freestyle skiing. I have a set of K2 Extreme skis in my shed somewhere..but the best marketing gimmick in the past 15 years has been the Salomon X-Scream line. X-Scream...ha. 70% of the people I see on these skis don't do anything more "X-Scream" than riding the lift with the bar up.