2021/22 FIS Freeski slopestyle World Cup season preview
Nov 06, 2021·Freeski Park & Pipe
The 2021/22 FIS Freeski World Cup is already underway after the season opened in spectacular fashion at the Big Air Chur on the 22nd of October, with Tess Ledeux (FRA) and Matej Svancer (AUT) taking the wins in one of the most entertaining and explosive city big air competitions we’ve ever seen.
Including the Big Air Chur event, the 2021/22 FIS Freeski World Cup will feature 11 competitions taking place at 10 venues on three continents - including a stop in Bakuriani (GEO) at the test event for the upcoming 2023 World Championships.
The biggest portion of this season’s FIS Freeski World Cup calendar will be made up of slopestyle events, with the first of the six competitions scheduled to take place this winter going down from 19-20 November at the world-famous Stubai Zoo in Austria.
From there, we’ll pick back up with slopestyle World Cup action in the new year at Mammoth Mountain (USA) from 7-8 January, followed by Font Romeu (FRA) from 14-16 January, the above-mentioned Bakuriani World Championships test event from 3-5 March, a long-awaited return to Tignes from 10-12 March for the resort’s first-ever turn hosting slopestyle World Cup competition, and finally onto the traditional season-ender in Silvaplana, which is slated to go down from 24-26 March.
LEDEUX LEADS THE WAY INTO NEW SEASON AFTER PERFECT 3-FOR-3 IN 2020/21
In 2020/21’s Covid-19-effected season, slopestyle was the only FIS Freeski event to have the requisite three competitions needed in order to award the crystal globes, and on the women’s side of things we saw Tess Ledeux win all three SS competitions to finish the season holding the trophies for both slopestyle and Freeski overall.
With her season-opening win in Chur a few weeks ago, Ledeux has shown she’s rolling into 2021/22 in top form once again, and the 19-year-old (she’ll turn 20 just three days after competition in Stubai) will be looking to carry that momentum through to the first slopestyle competition of the season in Austria and right up to the Beijing 2022 Olympic Winter Games.
At the previous Games in PyeongChang, Ledeux entered competition as the reigning slopestyle World Champion only to finish in a disappointing 15th place. You know this fact will be on her mind throughout the coming months with Beijing looming on the horizon, and now that’s she’s just taken the first big air win of her career in Chur she’s looking like a medal favourite for that event’s Olympic debut in Beijing, as well.
Speaking of World Champions, Ledeux and the rest of the women’s field will be in tough against Ailing Eileen Gu (CHN), who claimed gold at last season’s world champs in Aspen in both slopestyle and halfpipe, while also taking a bronze in big air. Gu has quickly become one of freeskiing’s biggest stars in just two years of international competition, and the pressure on her in 2021/22 will be huge. However, if anybody seems capable of handling that pressure and rising to the occasion, the supremely confident 18-year-old should be the one.
Switzerland’s Sarah Hoefflin and Mathilde Gremaud famously took gold and silver, respectively, at the PyeongChang 2018 Games, and both very much remain two of the world’s elite freeskiers, with 30-year-old Hoefflin already proving there’s still plenty of gas in her tank by taking a second-place finish at the Big Air Chur two weeks ago. Not to be forgotten for the Swiss is the third of their top trio, Giulia Tanno, who looked strong at Chur in her return from an injury suffered at the end of last season.
Others to watch out for on the women’s side in the 2021/22 slopestyle World Cup season include skiers like last season’s second-overall finisher Kirsty Muir and her British teammate Katie Summerhayes, Megan Oldham and Elena Gaskill of Canada, the strong USA team lead by Maggie Voisin and Marin Hamill, Johanne Killi and Sandra Eie of Norway, Russia’s Anastasia Tatalina, and the elusive Kelly Sildaru of Estonia, who looked poised to dominate the women’s freeski world before scaling her competition schedule back somewhat over the past couple of seasons.
STEVENSON PRIMED TO BUILD ON BREAKOUT 2020/21 SEASON
Last season’s World Cup top dog for the men was the USA’s Colby Stevenson, who collected two wins and a fifth-place finish in three SS competitions to match Ledeux by taking the slopestyle and Freeski overall crystal globes. Throw in a silver medal at the Aspen 2021 World Championships and a seemingly never-ending series of mind-blowing video clips on social media through the summer and into the autumn, and it all adds up to put the 24-year-old standing at the absolute pinnacle of men’s freeskiing heading into the 2021/22 season.
The men’s field is stacked, however, and on any given day there are 20 or more skiers capable of elevating their game and walking away with a win.
The one skier who’s elevated his competition-day game more than any other over the past six seasons is Andri Ragettli (SUI), the all-time FIS Freeski World Cup leader with 20 podiums, eight victories (tying him with Canada’s Cassie Sharpe) and four crystal globes.
Last season Ragettli claimed the first World Championships gold medal of his career by taking top spot at the Aspen 2021 slopestyle competition. Unfortunately he followed that up by overshooting the landing at the Aspen 2021 big air World Championships competition and suffering a knee injury in the process.
While Ragettli is back on snow and focused on being in prime shape for Beijing 2022, it will be interesting to see how hard he goes in World Cup competition leading up to the Games. However, with the likes of Fabian Boesch, Kim Gubser and Colin Wili all on the roster, the Swiss team in guaranteed to be strong once again this season.
Looking down the World Cup rankings from 2020/21 we see three Norwegians behind Stevenson - Ferdinand Dahl, Christian Nummedal and Sebastian Schjerve - and they, along with Birk Ruud, who took third place at the Chur Big Air already this season, will certainly be ones to watch.
The US team will be formidable as always, with skiers like Alex Hall, Mac Forehand, Cody Laplante and 2x Olympic medallist Nick Goepper all set to rep the Star and Stripes, while their northern neighbours the Canadians will be rolling just as heavy with Evan McEachran, Mark Hendrickson, Max Moffat and Big Air Chur second-place finisher Teal Harle on the roster.
We could go on all day, but one other name to mention is Matej Svancer, the Czech-turned-Austrian 17-year-old who wowed the crowd in Chur on his way to his first career World Cup victory in just his fifth start. The reigning Youth Olympic Games big air gold medallist and Junior World Champion in both big air and slopestyle, Svancer looks set to make a heavy impact on the World Cup tour this season.
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