Photo: IOC
The Winter Games are heading off-piste in 2030. The International Olympic Committee announced on Monday that freeride skiing and snowboarding will make their Olympic debuts in the French Alps with 22 men and 22 women competing for gold across the two disciplines.
“Freeride has experienced rapid international growth, benefiting from a strong youth fanbase and visually spectacular competition. It uses a natural field of play, which minimizes its impact on the Games. Comprising four events, it will provide an Olympic opportunity for 44 athletes (22 women and 22 men) to compete at the Games for the first time. Freeride started in the 1990s to develop as a discipline,” reads a press release from the IOC.
Those three decades of growth, from a grassroots movement to an Olympic discipline, were largely supported by the inception of the Freeride World Tour (FWT) in 1996. It was originally known as the Verbier Extreme and featured only snowboarders until skiing was finally introduced to the competition in 2004. Finally, in 2008, the first event under the current FWT name took place, which led to the consolidation of other freeride tours across both skiing and snowboarding into one global series.
“From the first Xtreme Verbier in 1996 to the inaugural FIS Freeride World Championships in 2026, three decades of riders, organizers and fans built this moment,” the Freeride World Tour wrote on Tuesday. “To those who first believed in this discipline, and to the young athletes who can now dream of an Olympic medal: this one is yours.”
The IOC also announced Tuesday that the 2030 Games will be the first to achieve an equal number of male and female athletes. The 22 men and 22 women competing in freeride snowboarding and freeride skiing will just be a small piece of the 3,046 athletes spread out across all Olympic events. There will be 1,525 female athletes and 1,521 male athletes in a total of 126 events.
“These changes reflect the IOC’s commitment to ensuring that gender parity is achieved, and that the Olympic program continues to evolve and remain relevant to future generations of athletes and fans, while controlling cost and complexity,” the IOC said in the release.
