Alpine and Nordic World
Champs Teams Named
On Jan. 25, the USSA announced the newly minted U.S. Freeski-
ing program as well as an eight-year partnership with outdoor brand
The North Face.
Not to be confused with big or all-mountain freeskiing, and also
separate from freestyle (moguls and aerials) U.S. Freeskiing will
initially support three rising stars of snowsport competition — ski
cross, slopestyle skiing and halfpipe skiing. According to the USSA’s vice president of communications, Tom Kelly, the organization
identified the importance of the three sports years ago, and is now
hoping to capitalize on the sports’ possible inclusion in future Olympic Winter Games.
“Obviously we have our eye on IOC executive meetings in early
April,” Kelly says. “We don’t know for sure, but we anticipate that
a decision may come about having halfpipe skiing and slopestyle
skiing join ski cross as Olympic sports in 2014. These up-and-com-
ing sports are handled in lots of different ways by
lots of different organizations. For example, the
FIS puts all of these sports under freestyle. But
we’ve taken a real careful look at how we can best
organize and structure ourselves to provide ser-
vices for our athletes, and we felt they should be
managed together under a U.S. Freeskiing ath-
letic program.”
Kelly adds that “this area represents one of the
fastest-growing segments of our sport,” and that
USSA felt that a U.S. Freeskiing brand dedicated
to the aforementioned sports would help attract
sponsors.
“The North Face is aggressively trying to support
this area of skiing right now,” Kelly says. “They’re
involved with the X Games this year for the first
time, they started a park and pipe series, and now
they’ve partnered with us. But we were most en-
couraged by their history of supporting athletes
in skiing — icons like Scott Schmidt and Jeremy Nobis. There’s a
culture at the company of supporting athletes, which was very im-
portant to us, of course.”
But don’t expect to see athletes named to a U.S. Freeskiing team
just yet. Kelley says that this is simply the announcement of a brand
and a program for the moment. The IOC’s decisions about the in-
clusion of slopestyle and halfpipe skiing at 2014’s Sochi Olympic
Winter Games will influence how USSA navigates supporting a fu-
ture team.
“Right now the emphasis is to introduce the program, and where
you’ll see it manifest itself is with events,” Kelly says. “Knowing this
was coming down the pike, we added a number of freeskiing events
on our program this year. For example, we added skiing halfpipe,
slopestyle skiing and ski cross to major events like the Visa U.S.
Halfpipe Grand Prix and the U.S. Revolution Tour this year. We
were looking at it and realized, ‘You know, all the facilities are al-
ready there [for snowboarding], we might as well add skiing.’”
Competition for the 2011 FIS Freestyle World Championships
takes place at Park City and Deer Valley Feb. 2 to 5. In what’s
largely considered an audition for members of the IOC executive
committee concerning inclusion at the 2014 Games, slopestyle ski-
ing, halfpipe skiing and ski cross will be featured alongside tradi-
tional freestyle events like moguls and aerials.
“We’re hoping for a successful event at Deer Valley and Park
City,” Kelly says, “so that the IOC is encouraged to bring these new
events onboard for Sochi.”
USSA & The North Face PARTNER FOR NEW
FREESKIING PROGRAM BY BY BRYCE HUBNER The U.S. Ski Team
The 2011 U.S. Alpine World
Ski Championships Team
Men
Women
The 2011 U.S. Cross
Country World Ski
Championships Team
Men
Women
The 2011 U.S. Nordic
Combined World Ski
Championships Team
Follow World Champs
coverage at skiracing.com
Denver’s Big Air opening night on Jan. 25. With the new U.S. Freeskiing Program, slopestyle skiing, ski cross and halfpipe skiing get a big boost from sponsors and USSA officials.
