FWT Georgia Pro, staged in Kühtai, got cancelled too

They definitely tried but finally the Freeride World Tour had to give in to this winter’s notoriously tricky snow conditions. The Georgia Pro event, originally scheduled to be held this week in the Great Caucasus mountains of Svaneti, was moved to a face in Kühtai, Austria which offered safe conditions due to season-long avalanche patrol work connected to a gondola in one of Innsbruck’s local ski areas. Snow had fallen but the sun and high temperatures had turned the abundance of fresh powder from last week into a mix of soft, hard and everything in between in record time.

Schöffi’s Face, the projected venue for the Georgia Pro staged in Kühtai, looked good in the morning. Not the most extreme of slopes but with a great variety of terrain for the athletes to play with. Since the face is equipped with stationary avalanche patrol devices due to the Kaiserbahn gondola located right at the bottom of the slope and weak snow layers had therefore been bombed away all season long, the venue was safe for riding amidst a notoriously dangerous avalanche situation, both in the Tyrolean Alps and the Great Caucasus of Georgia. Despite causing some debate, the FWT’s choice to try to hold the contest in Austria instead of in Georgia, made sense. However, the variety of the terrain ultimately proved to be a big problem. Aware of the difficult snow situation with the slope’s exposure to sun and the current conditions with bright sunshine all day long and really high temperatures, the organizers as well as the riders had hoped for decent spring skiing conditions. Forerunners were checking the slope regularly from the originally projected starting time at 8:30 CET until the first rider, current tour leader Ben Richards, finally dropped in about one hour later to what were seemingly fine conditions. However, landing a big air at high speed and arriving at a part of the slope with slightly different exposure to the sun, Ben got caught up in crusty snow and crashed. The second starter, Joey Leonardo, did the same, only that he was caught even more off guard in a completely mellow section of terrain. After that, the jury decided that conditions were not suitable yet for the competition and postponed the start to later, allowing the two crashed competitors a re-run when conditions would align. A remarkable decision that could have caused a lot more debate had the event happened, but since the snow remained variable across the face and the event was finally cancelled due to inadequate snow conditions shortly before noon, it’s likely staying a curiosity.

In the end, the communication from FWT remained a bit vague. What’s clear: The next event is the Fieberbrunn Pro in Austria with an event window from fifth to tenth of March. That also means that the Georgia Pro event isn’t happening in the 2026 season, it’s now officially cancelled. However, that doesn’t solve the problem why the Georgia Pro was cancelled early in Georgia and restaged to Austria in the first place. Due to the addition of the official Freeride World Championships, the 2026 FWT calendar only has four contests scheduled before a cut of the competing athletes is made ahead of the final events in Alaska and Verbier. The decisive tour standings would have been calculated upon every athlete’s three best results out of four. With one of those four events cancelled, this procedure would need to be changed to either include all three results or would be decided upon only two results, likely causing many riders to be sitting on equal tour points which might complicate the cut, not to mention that a tour standing based on only two results seems a bit arbitrary. Whether this issue will be solved with an additional contest in the Fieberbrunn event window, wasn’t addressed yet, but doesn’t seem to be completely out of question. We’ll keep you updated as details of the Fieberbrunn Pro will become available soon. Until then, let’s hope winter won’t quit just yet.