Olympics-Freestyle Skiing-Revitalised Gu leads field ready to thrill on the slopes

By Lisa Richwine and Giulia Segreti

LIVIGNO, Italy, Feb 5 – China’s Eileen Gu, a double Olympic champion in freestyle skiing, heads back to the slopes from Saturday at the Milano Cortina Games as a top contender in a field expected to showcase some of the most advanced tricks in the sport.

Freestyle skiing features seven disciplines that see athletes navigating moguls or performing dramatic aerial flips and twists, offering some of the most compelling scenes in winter sports. 

The Olympic events will take place in Livigno, a ski town in northern Italy that has been blanketed with snow in recent days.

Competitors include U.S. stars Alex Hall and Alex Ferreira, Swiss slopestyle champion Mathilde Gremaud, and emerging talent from New Zealand and Canada.

At Beijing in 2022, Gu became the first person to win three freestyle skiing medals at a single Games with gold in big air and halfpipe plus silver in slopestyle. The 22-year-old is a major threat in all three disciplines in Livigno.

American-born Gu, who represents her mother’s nation China, said this week she had discovered a new love for her sport after feeling stuck for years. 

Freestyle skiers will compete in moguls, aerials, halfpipe, slopestyle, big air, ski cross and, for the first time, dual moguls in 15 medal events across two purpose‑built venues.

Several of the competitors had a strong 2024-25 season, leading analysts to predict some of the most progressive tricks to date. 

AMPLITUDE AND DUAL MOGULS

Compared with Beijing 2022, where tricks first surged past 2160-degree rotations, Livigno will see greater innovation with skiers landing 2340s and pushing amplitude to new levels.

The standout is American halfpipe specialist Alex Ferreira, who is seeking the only medal missing from his collection: Olympic gold. 

Ferreira’s closest rival may be compatriot Nick Goepper, a former slopestyle medallist who made the unusual decision to transition to halfpipe. Their biggest challenger is New Zealand breakout star Fin Melville Ives.

Dual moguls will add a high‑intensity, head‑to‑head format. The event features two skiers racing side‑by‑side through parallel bump fields, with judges assessing speed, turns, and aerial manoeuvres.

Canada’s Mikael Kingsbury anchors the moguls contingent as he targets a fourth Olympic medal at what is likely his final Games.

BIG JUMPS AND LONG RAILS

Several skiers were impressed with the runs in Livigno and noted that the slopestyle course had longer and closer rails than typical World Cup courses, affecting the way they pieced together tricks.

“They’re built in a good type of way that you can hit it in a really creative way but, at the same time, the competition vibe and jumps seem to be pretty good too,” Austrian freestyle skier Matej Svancer said.

Canada’s Evan McEachran said the rails would showcase an important side of freestyle skiing.

“That’ll be the deciding factor on this course,” he said, adding it looked “challenging but could be rewarding.”

U.S. freestyle skier Troy Podmilsak said the jumps were “the biggest jumps I’ve ever hit in a slopestyle run.”

Britain’s Kristy Muir said she was happy that freestyle skiing would receive worldwide attention during the Olympics. 

“Fewer people know about our sports, and I think it’s really cool that more people are seeing them,” she said.

(Reporting by Lisa Richwine and Giulia Segreti; Additional reporting by Kurt Hall and Joyce Zhou; Editing by Ken Ferris)