First ever Freeride World Champions: Zuzanna Witych & Ben Richards

Freeriding entered a new era this Tuesday in the Pyrenees. For the first time, an official FIS World Championships took place in our sport which is considered a milestone on a potential way to becoming an Olympic discipline in France 2030. This meant not only a new nomenclature for victory trophies but also some fundamental changes including the first noticeable appearances of national teams in freeriding including the nomination of participants by national federations according to national quota based mainly, but not only on ranking lists. See our preview article for further details. 

At least the snow gods were impressed by the new event and delivered a good pack of fresh powder to turn the competition face into a nice, yet slightly sketchy playground. Eventually, the weather played along too after the event was on hold the whole morning because of persistent fog. Around noon the sky cleared and the snowboarders could start the much anticipated competition. In total, 65 competitors from 17 countries gathered at the top of 2,687 m high Basser Negre: 10 snowboard women, 14 snowboard men, 16 ski women and 24 ski men. Snowboard Men had the honor to drop in first before Snowboard Women and the titles went to Switzerland’s Liam Rivera and American Mia Jones respectively.

Then it was time for Ski Men. Kai Jones was first on the venue and he set things off with a blast. The 19-year-old youngster, who has made a name for himself in filming and only takes to competitive skiing occasionally like at last season’s Natural Selection event, put on an energetic show. At the top, he skied the cliffed-out “Turdell Chute”—named after the Swedish veteran who had pioneered that line last decade—with full speed, then backflipped a windlip on a small cliff that proved to be popular but also caused problems to many riders due to a rather short landing. Kai continued with a three over another cliff and finished double jumping two big cliffs in close succession at the bottom part of the venue. The intensity level was through the roof, but backslap landings at his two trick jumps kept the score in the mid 70s. However, the venue proved to be rather tricky and many riders had problems in their landings while some got really unlucky, as hidden rocks grabbed their skis in seemingly chill sections. This handed former FWT champion Max Hitzig a “No Score” result just like Kelly Hilleke and Tiemo Rolshoven while Kai kept his lead.

It was already rather late when the Ski Women finally started their competition. Maybe the long waiting period had wrecked some nerves or the chance to win a historic title prompted a few competitors to take on more risk than usual, but the competition started with quite a few crashes. German Lena Kohler had a strong run including several good drops but she wanted to finish with a bang and tackled one of the highest cliffs I have seen any female competitor attempt in recent history—definitely reminiscent of Jaclyn Paaso who happened to be on the judges panel in Andorra. Unfortunately the landing proved too flat for Lena. Australian Zanna Farrell skied the top part with more pace than many men but couldn’t hold it together and gave a textbook example of a yard sale. Meanwhile both Elisabet Marina from Spain and Swiss Jenna Keller got ballistic on the windlip-over-cliff with huge backflip attempts that both couldn’t land. At least Elisabet kept her skis on which earned her a sixth place in the end. 

Expectation remained high, though, as many of the riders considered favorites before the event still waited to drop in. The first one to do so was New Zealand’s Jess Hotter. The kiwi who had won the Freeride World Tour overall title in 2022 but focused on filming lately, returned to the competition scene with a strong performance up top, but she crashed at a backflip attempt over a windlip towards the bottom. The crash itself didn’t seem to be too bad, but unfortunately Jess twisted her knee while tumbling through the snow and required external recovery. Since the wind had picked up during the day, the rescue by helicopter proved to be difficult. By the time the face was cleared again for riding, fog reentered the face and obscured the view for the judges. Of course, the jury waited as long as possible, but that late in the day dawn was just around the corner and finally the rest of the competition was called off. Since 11 out of 16 female skiers had started, the two-thirds rules applied which says that a competition counts whenever two thirds of the competitors did start. One rider less and the competition would have been cancelled. It’s particularly unfortunate considering who didn’t get the chance to ski: Manon Loschi, last year’s winner of Natural Selection; Agostina Vietti, winner of the Val Thorens Pro last week; Astrid Cheylus, Lily Bradley and Wynter McBride, all featured on FWT podiums this or last season.

Overall, the atmosphere at this FWCH premiere in Andorra was great and the event was universally welcomed by the whole freeride community. The emergence of national teams was generally welcomed and added some extra excitement, although the role of the teams wasn’t too prominent yet and didn’t really change the contest proceedings compared to regular FWT events. How that will evolve in the future remains to be seen. On that note, a hesitantly communicated nation ranking saw France finish at the top in front of USA and Canada, calculated over all four competition categories upon undisclosed calculating rules. It’s a bit unclear how that can be a fair competition with USA and France featuring eleven and ten competitors respectively while every other nation had a maximum of five competitors. Let’s just hope the nationality aspect won’t become dominant in our beloved sport in the near future.