This week sees the first officially sanctioned crowing of Freeride World Champions. Freeride World Tour events have been FIS sanctioned for a while but contrary to popular belief the Freeride World Tour overall winners of the past aren’t considered official world champions. However, this current event is not only changing the nomenclature of freeride titles, it’s also starting a new era for the sport. Here we give a short overview of what’s new, what to expect from the event in Andorra and what that might mean in the long run.
Dom Daher / FWT
Event News
A World’s First
FIS holds Freeride World Champs in Andorra
First of all, let’s look at the competition details. The conditions look really promising as more than a meter of fresh snow hit the resort over the last few days and temperatures remain pretty low. The only missing factor might be the sun since the forecast for this week remains uncertain. As a consequence of the great snow conditions, the freeride circuit is scheduled to return to the traditional competition venue in the Ordino Arcalis ski resort: the Basser Negre face right on the western border of the area and directly above the piste—easy to access for everybody interested, so expect an enthusiastic crowd. Basser Negre offers 470 vertical meters of challenging terrain with an average gradient of 36° and lots of options for spectacular maneuvers. The first rider is scheduled to drop at 9:15. In case you can’t make it to Andorra, be sure to watch the action as usual on the FWT website.
As said before, the FIS Freeride World Championships in Andorra are a world’s first: It’s the first title of this calibre in freeriding that is approved by a sports organization widely accepted as the governing body of the sport. Of course, that organization for skiing is FIS; for example, there’s no possibility of any discipline performed on two skis—or a snowboard for that matter—becoming part of the Olympics without approval of FIS. That fight was fought about three decades ago and it ended with FIS integrating snowboarding as a discipline in order to bring it to the Olympics—it debuted 1998 in Nagano—and the ISF (International Snowboarding Federation) eventually disappeared. (See the article about FIS’ acquisition of the Freeride World Tour in our book Ski Stories Volume 4.) Obviously, the first official world championships are a major step for “Freeride” as a competitive sport onto a bigger stage, and a mandatory one if the sport eventually wants to become Olympic. In that respect, it’s curious that the premiere of the FIS Freeride World Championships happens exactly one week before the big Olympic showdown in Italy.
The fact that this premiere happens in an Olympic season is remarkable. Usually the cycle of world championships for ski events is two years—at least for Olympic disciplines—and they don’t happen in the same year as the Olympic Games. It’s unclear yet whether there will be a FIS Freeride World Championships in 2027, but if not and if the disciplines went on to become Olympic as early as 2030—there are strong rumors of integration into the 2030 Olympics in France—the cycle of World Championships would need to adapt very soon: either there are world champs in consecutive years or there won’t be one for three years in a row. To still see the event happen this season—especially considering the timing—could be seen as an indication that FIS and/or FWT strongly push for Freeride becoming Olympic. If we see a great event this week, it’s perfect advertising for the sport towards the IOC. On the other hand, there is also good reason to be critical about the timing in respect to general media attention. Most mainstream media that care about winter sports are already fully focused on the Olympic mega-event starting next Friday with plenty of qualifications and trainings already happening this week. If the FIS Freeride World Championships will get its share of attention, remains to be seen. At least the event got a premium sponsor with Allianz last minute.
But even without speculating about the future, this first FIS Freeride World Championships offers a lot of talking points, specifically in Freeride-inclined circles. For example, it’s the first ever freeride event that sees the emergence of national teams in the freeride sport. While “nation” is an important aspect of most ski disciplines, it has largely remained a side note at freeride competitions. That’s not the case at FIS World Championships where national quota decide about participants as much as discipline rankings. In fact, we saw national teams proudly presenting their countries at the bib draw in Andorra. How that will change the sport in the future remains to be seen. It definitely had an impact on the freestyle side of our sport. (You could read an article touching this topic our current book Ski Stories Volume 6).
The Japanese team at the FIS Freeride World Championships
Jeremy Bernard / FWT
Talking about participants, there are notable additions to the ski roster in Andorra compared to the 2026 FWT. For example, Manon Loschi returns for the French team, Kai Jones strengthens Team USA and Andreas Bakke starts for Norway—undoubtedly riders everybody’s looking forward to watch. On the other hand, quite a few names we saw on the FWT this year—and thus unquestionably qualified for competing at the highest level—are missing: Lou Barin, Zoé Delzoppo, Sybille Blanjean, Paul de Pourtalès, Jack Kolesch, Lachlan Harvey and most notably Joey Leonardo, who just finished second at the Val Thorens Pro last week. See the full team rosters below and figure who else might be missing for legitimate world championships, but this process of nominating participants by countries according to national starting slots likely will cause heated debates in the future.
