Skiing, The ‘Newschool’ Version: The Sport of Freeskiing
Once upon a time there was skiing, a sport that was considered to be cutting-edge and radical. Then it got a bit boring and out came snowboarders with their crazy stunts and tricks. But when everyone and their mothers started to jump on snowboards and try to act ‘cool’, the more radical youngsters out there needed something new to do. Thus, freeskiing was born; it is a combination of skiing and snowboarding. It was the latest and coolest thing to hit the slopes. Some have called it the rebirth of skiing and it is giving skiers something new and exciting to look forward to. This nascent sport is just going to keep on growing in the years to come.
Freeskiing was invented as a term in the mid 1990s to describe very high mountain skiing from slopes that could only be accessed by helicopters. Then, slowly the popularity of the sport grew and it started to represent any sort of extreme skiing. Recently, the term has come to mean skiing with skiers doing tricks and getting massive air while performing. Freeskiers use similar facilities as snowboarders such as ramps, rails and half pipes. This is a natural progression, because snowboarders borrowed heavily from skateboarding when it first started and now this new type of skiing is borrowing from snowboarding. Freeskiers usually use twin tip skis that allow for greater flexibility while skiing, and let tricks like skiing backwards take place, and take off and landing become easier while giving a lot of height to the skier.
There are many different types of events that can take place in freeskiing. The first is doing tricks similar to snowboarding, while another is a race on a banked super ski course that has rails, twists, turns and pipes in it that allow the skiers to follow a set path but also gives them the option of doing crazy tricks and earning serious points in the process. The objective of the sport is to be cool. Regular skiing lost its coolness over the years and now even snowboarding seems to be slightly uncool because of the huge amount of people taking part in the sport. The edgy crowd out there were looking for something new and fresh that could become their own. They took the coolness of snowboarding and injected it into skiing. What they got was a combination of the two and a new sport was born in the process. The new sport did not have a governing body in its early days so it was a free-spirited activity without too many rules and regulations, and because it was a small close-knit group, they could amend things as they saw fit. If they did not like something it was out. Now the sport has become sanctioned, has a governing body and has a lot of professional skiers interested in it.
Freeskiing takes many forms and one of the most interesting is skiing down huge mountains all over the world. Greg Hill is a 34 year old freeskier who takes to the highest slopes with a unique goal. His goal is to climb up mountains and ski 2 million vertical miles during the calendar year. He has managed to generate $400,000 in sponsorship to complete this insane task. He believes he is the first person ever to try this feat and he is following his dream. He climbs the highest peaks and then films everything and takes in his natural environment before skiing down at a blistering pace. It seems there are people in the world who like to push the boundaries of what they do and live life on the edge.
Freeskiing is the latest sport to hit the slopes of the world. In a few years, it might become as big as snowboarding and come out of the shadows and become truly mainstream. Then the problem for the youngsters will be what they should do next, because even their granddads will be flying down tracks doing back-flips and other tricks. In the meantime though, the sport looks all set to grow even bigger than it currently is and will soon take over the world.
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