How coaching is helping grow Freeride

Freeride is a sport with its roots and ethos very much steeped in individuality. There is no ‘right’ route to descend a slope, and an athlete chooses whichever way they see fit.

When the Freeride World Tour (FWT) was born in 2008, coaching was not a thing. But in recent years, more athletes - particularly in Europe - have started to reach out for advice. Unsurprisingly, given the unique challenge of the discipline, coaches tend to be former athletes who split their time between working with elite athletes and youngsters.

Find out how coaching is aiding the development of Freeride, with the FWT’s acquisition by FIS in December 2022 further increasing its reach.

The Atlantic divide

Many competitive Freeriders come from a video background having filmed themselves on descents and performing tricks. Actually going down slopes to earn scores from judges is a different concept.

Youngsters from the two pioneer continents for Freeride - Europe and North America - usually go to a school or academy to learn the essentials of reading the face of the mountain, as well as advanced ski and snowboard techniques.

For competition, while the vast majority of North American athletes rely on themselves, most Europeans have a coach to guide them. In many cases, that coach will be someone who has mentored them previously.

Robin Darbellay is rare among Freeride coaches in that he never actually took part on the FWT. Having quit Alpine Skiing as a teenager, the Swiss decided that competition was not for him. While at university, he worked as a ski instructor at Verbier (SUI) - the Mecca of Freeride - where he encountered FWT founder CEO Nicolas Hale-Woods.

“I was teaching his two sons, Thibault and Victor, when they were young and some of their friends,” Darbellay recalls. “They started to want to Freeride, and then Nicolas said, ‘Oh, it would be nice to create a group because I think it could work.’

From that germ of an idea, Darbellay helped launch the FWT Verbier Academy in 2011. While Thibault Hale-Woods failed to make it beyond the FWT Qualifier, younger brother Victor made his FWT debut earlier this month won last season’s FWT Challenger.

Darbellay was content with being a coach at the academy, but one athlete made him expand his focus. “Martin Bender started with us at 10 years old and competed in juniors,” he says. “Generally at around 15 or 16, athletes would go off by themselves and do their own thing. But Martin changed that because he wanted to stay with us.

After claiming the FWT Junior title, Bender won the FWT Challenger in 2023 to earn his spot on the FWT proper. A runner-up finish in the Georgia Pro helped him to 10th place overall, before he took second in the 2025 series.

“The first year he was on the tour, it was more like distance coaching,” admits Darbellay. “I was only with him in Verbier. Last year I was with him more, in Val Thorens (FRA), Kicking Horse (CAN) and Verbier again. And all the others, it's with the computer.”

Coaches play a major role in helping their athletes scope the slope, as well as helping calm down their charges before the the descent. “With the juniors, we like to have one coach at the bottom and one at the top just to be with them and comfort them,” says Darbellay. “I quite like to have someone at the top because It’s quite stressful for them, and also some faces are really hard for the kids because they don’t really know where to go to find the line.

“After years of practise with Martin, I can be at the bottom and we’re calling each other. We discuss the line, because we always have two plans. If something goes wrong with Plan A - if there’s no more snow or there’s rock on the landing - we have to go to Plan B. And we’re discussing what’s happening on the face in real time, if it’s still possible to do it, or if he has to change the angle of direction of the jump.

“Sometimes, I’ll speak to him 30 seconds before although sometimes he has a little bit more time at the top. Sometimes, he’ll really want to know something and I’m there for that so I pass on the information. Or sometimes it’s just a text or WhatsApp.”

Stefan Häusl - “Every athlete is different.”

One North American Freeride skier who does have a coach is two-time FWT Ski Women champion Justine Dufour-Lapointe. The Canadian works with Stefan Häusl, who spent almost a decade on the FWT and won the stop in Fieberbrunn (AUT) in 2011.

Dufour-Lapointe says she has a second family when she goes to train with Häusl in Austria. One of her colleagues is Häusl’s daughter Jana who was crowned FWT Junior champion in 2024.

“Our sport and coaching is a little different from ski racing, for example,” says Stefan Häusl. “Our coaching is more mentoring on the professional athlete side, and giving a tactical approach. It’s also giving them the skills to have the tools in their runs - how to do the perfect technique for a backflip or a 360 or a Cork 720. You have to prepare then, but then it’s more helping, mentoring, and a lot on the tactical side.”

Having been an FWT competitor himself, Häusl has watched the sport evolve significantly over the years. “Before, it was crazy people in the rocks and now it's artists playing on the mountain,” he quips. “We couldn’t do the 360s so we went for more exotic lines. We went to places where people thought it wasn’t possible to ski. Now people are not going so much for those zones because they can’t do their tricks there. They go to more ‘playful’ areas to add the Freestyle elements.”

Häusl also works with 2023 FWT Ski Men Valentin Rainer (AUT), and Tiemo Rolshoven (GER) who finished ninth in his FWT rookie season in 2025.

“Every athlete is different because every athlete has their magic skills, you know, in different parts,” he explains. “Like, Justine is really strong in doing big backflips and Valentin is such a strong rider in the turns and fast. From the technical aspect, you have to look for different stuff with them to suit their style, their riding style, to bring out the strength of their riding in their runs.

“But also every rider is different on a personal aspect. For instance, Justine really plans every turn in detail. Then you have other riders who need more freedom as they can't plan every turn; they need options and maybe during the run they decide, ‘OK, I still do that at the end or do that jump.’ They need more freedom in their planning.

“Every person is different, every athlete is different, and the art of coaching is to see that and adjust the coaching to every person. Some riders involve me more while others do a lot by themselves. For those, I leave them and only if there’s a big mistake will I say, ‘I don’t think this is a good idea,’ and then we talk about.”

One of Häusl’s strengths has always been scoping the slope, something that is far easier than in the past. “When we went out filming in Alaska 30 years ago, our people took Polaroid photos of the mountain. And we took the photo with us into the helicopter, and jumped out of it following that line. We have more information now!

“I studied by myself when I was a rider and it helps now, for sure. Many of the mountains I skied myself five times or more. Verbier I skied eight or nine times, so I know many lines and the rocks laying there. Experience is important and I’m getting better even now the more I scope.”

Seb Michaud the part-time competition coach

Another former FWT competitor-turned-coach, Seb Michaud, has 2024 FWT Ski Women runner-up Astrid Cheylus and Oscar Mandin among his charges. The Frenchman was dubbed the ‘King of the Backflip’ after producing a spectacular example at Verbier in 2006.

“When I stopped in 2013, I joined a good friend who was the director of an independent ski school," he recalls. "The first year, I worked some weekends and met some young riders. A year later, I had a proper group of eight to 10 youngsters and then at the end of the 2015 season, they said, ‘This is cool. We want to progress and do some competitions.’”

Cheylus and Manon Loschi were among the budding riders to move up the ranks under Michaud, with the former becoming FWT Junior champion in 2021. And his partnership with Cheylus is similar to that of Darbellay and Bender. “I followed Astrid when she started at 12 or 13 years old,” he recalls. “At 14, she was in the junior categories and we did all the season in the juniors.

“When you ride with the juniors, you have parents or a coach with you. I decided when I ended my competitive career to have a junior group and, at the end, only Astrid stayed at the high level. I follow them only during the competition, not through all the season.

“The technique is almost perfect with these guys because they have had so many years training. You can always progress with technique but they are really almost at the top.

“My role is to help them with my experience, because I have more than 25 years experience in the mountains. I also have a lot of competition experience so I can help them to read the line. If they have one idea, I can bring some other ideas for line choice. We work together.

“I arrive the day before the competition and we go to scope. And we work a lot on the computer afterwards, drawing a line on the picture. It’s really important to have this because I can’t go to every competition. I didn’t go to Canada or Alaska last year, so they send me the picture, and we draw.”

Michaud is another veteran who marvels at the tools available to athletes in terms of scoping the slope these days. “When I skied, we only had binoculars and it was right at the start of the computer age,” he says, “You had to rely a lot more on instinct. But now with drone footage from the bottom, from the top, from the side, you have almost skied the line beforehand.

“This is normal, it’s evolution. Freeride is more professional now so you need to have all this preparation. And with all these tools, athletes are more confident and have fewer crashes.

“The level now is really, really high in Juniors, in Qualifiers, in Challenger. For me, the level in Challenger is almost the same as the FWT. Sometimes you have FWT riders who go back to Challenger so it’s a mix.”

Unlike Darbellay and Häusl, Michaud is very much a part-time coach as he also runs a restaurant in La Clusaz with his wife. Were Freeride to be announced as part of the 2030 Olympic Winter Games in the French Alps, where La Clusaz is situated, he could even be coaching in the morning and serving customers in the evening.

Aymar Navarro leads Spain’s Freeride revolution

As well as swelling numbers on the FWT, the growth of Freeride can also be seen in the number of youngsters taking up the sport. Soon after his retirement three years ago, Aymar Navarro started working with the Spanish Winter Sports Federation (RFEDI).

Renowned for his fast and daring descents, Navarro acknowledges that Freeride coming under the FIS umbrella is a big boost to the development of the sport. “Until FIS came along, RFEDI didn’t have too much to do with Freeride although they did support me during my competitive years. But FIS recognition is a huge leap forward.

“The growth over the last few years has been significant, far exceeding our expectations. Now is the time to organize everything properly, and provide as much support as possible within our means.

“My role right now within RFEDI is to help both the board and the riders as much as possible, and to be a point of reference for athletes within the federation. My goal is to make the riders’ jobs as easy as possible so, in the not-too-distant future, we can have our own structure and give them what they deserve to be competitive.

“We’re creating a foundation and providing youngsters with a circuit of several national competitions to make it more accessible for everyone, both financially for families and so children don’t have to travel so far. They’ll have the opportunity to earn points in local events, but all under the FWT Junior category so they can then access higher-level competition in Europe.

“This year, we will have two three-star Junior competitions (the highest category) and two more two-star competitions. Little by little, we are paving the way.”

Since Navarro’s retirement, RFEDI has backed the likes of skier Abel Moga and snowboarder Núria Castán on the FWT, as well as Abril Cuevas and Pol Sabidó at last year’s Freeride Junior World Championships in Kappl (AUT). He is now seeking a more rounded approach to developing Freeride from the ground up with the 36-year-old citing three key elements.

“Having role models like Abel and Núria, like I was for them, is key so that young people have someone to look up to and a real idol at home,” he claims. “They can see that if they work hard and believe, they can achieve their goals.

“The second element is having a national circuit with several competitions close to home. This makes everything far easier, especially getting started, so you can get good points without having to travel far.

“And the third is the clubs who are doing an excellent job. They’re the ones responsible for the fact that we have so many good riders in Spain, and a good pool of young athletes awaiting their opportunity.”

The first FIS World Championships being held in nearby Andorra at the start of February can also play their part. “It’s clear that it's a very important step for our sport and will be positive for young athletes to be able to pursue their sporting careers with more support,” he adds. “I hope that all the federations support their riders as they make a huge effort to represent their countries as best as possible. We at RFEDI have been fortunate to have their support for some years now, and I hope this is just the beginning of something even bigger.”