What does it take to be a Freeride athlete?

As its name suggests, the sport of Freeride offers skiers and snowboarders freedom to compete in whichever way they see fit. The aim is to descend the mountain in the most impressive way possible, with riders judged on five criteria - ‘line’, ‘control’, ‘technique’, ‘fluidity’, and ‘air and style’.

Freeride takes place on natural, steep slopes that are often inaccessible by lifts. These unmarked, wild slopes require athletes to devise their own paths with no two runs ever the same.

While there is great beauty and serenity in these unique mountain environments, the terrain can be unpredictable and dangerous. Competing on the Freeride World Tour (FWT) requires great preparation and awareness, plus extreme skill and caution during the descent.

Freeride athletes come from a variety of backgrounds, but they are united by an appreciation of nature and the mountain. Ahead of the first FIS Freeride World Championships taking place in Andorra in February, find out more about the riders and how they equip themselves for this most spectacular of disciplines.

Switching codes, and even sports

It almost goes without saying that being a Freeride athlete demands great prowess in either skiing and snowboarding. A number of Freeriders used to compete in Freestyle Skiing - most notably Moguls - or Park & Pipe, with some even contesting World Cup events.

Two-time Freeride World Tour series winner Justine Dufour-Lapointe was a world and Olympic champion in Moguls before switching to Freeride, following the path of former Moguls rival Hedwig Wessel.

“I saw it like pretty much anybody else on social media,” says Dufour-Lapointe. “I watched Freeride World Tour on my phone, on YouTube. And I was like, ‘Oh my God, this sport is really, really cool. It’s way cooler to see the mountain and nature.’

“It's just so captivating to see athletes on top of the mountain, a fresh land where you can just draw your line and be yourself, and there's no good or bad line. It's just a free landscape that you have to just draw your line. So I think I was drawn to that.”

Justine Dufour-Lapointe: from Moguls superstar to Freeride hero

Lena Kohler was an Alpine Ski hopeful, but did not enjoy the team setup in her native Germany. Having returned after a year off skiing recreationally with her father, she again quit citing tensions with the regimen and coaches. A three-month stay in Japan, after moving to Innsbruck (AUT) following high school, saw her rediscover her love of skiing.

“At first, I was working as a ski instructor,” Kohler recalls. “Then I travelled around a bit and went to Hakuba and saw Freeride competitions for the first time. I hadn’t heard about them before. Then I was there for the FWT stop, and I watched that and was kind of hooked.

“When I stopped Alpine Skiing, I needed to find something a little more open and free. In Freeride, I can be me and do whatever I want. It’s like a safe space for me to try out something completely different, where I can experiment and be outdoorsy with friends. And I never thought I would end up back in competitions, but here I am!”

Family can be a big influence too; Toby Rafford followed his sister, former event winner Addie, onto the FWT in 2025 and finished third overall on his debut season. The 22-year-old has always been into skateboarding, but Moguls was his specialty before Freeride.

“We were on ski team together since we were little ‘groms’, and I’ve always just followed her path a little bit,” says Rafford. “We did Moguls until I was 14 or 15, and she said she was going to switch and do Freeride competition. I was like, ‘Oh, sick. I’m down.’

“Watching videos of Freeride, I thought it was just so raw and free, and everyone skis differently. In Moguls, a lot of people ski the same. I think I had emotions and feelings that I wanted to release in skiing, and there’s so much more style in Freeride.”

From posting videos to posting scores

Freeride is obviously spectacular and lends itself well to being filmed with athletes using GoPros to record their exploits. A number of athletes on the FWT shot videos before joining the competitive fray, and continue to do so now.

Snowboarder Victor de Le Rue is one of those and now has four FWT titles to his name. They came after big brother Xavier - a two-time Snowboard Cross world champion - won the first three series from 2008 to 2010.

“When I was just competing in freestyle, I was not that great,” admits de Le Rue. “I was having a great time and improving, but not one of the best. Filming in backcountry segments, that’s where I started to reach my potential. I then switched a bit to Freeride and made some cool movies.

“After that, I felt, ‘OK, I have done everything I can do here. Let’s try something new.' And this was competition.”

France has been blessed with some superb Freeride snowboarders down the years including the de Le Rue brothers and Marion Haerty, another four-time FWT champion. Now Noémie Equy - who is based at Val Thorens like de Le Rue - is continuing her nation’s reign, winning the FWT on her debut season in 2025.

The 24-year-old’s career has been heavily influenced by Haerty who made a winning guest appearance at Val Thorens last season. She recalls, “When I was still in Freestyle and saw her in ski resorts, every time she told me, ‘Come to Freeride. You’re gonna love it!’ Every time, she planted a little seed in my head so she's clearly one of the people who encouraged me to turn to Freeride.

“Before, she was just an inspiration for me as an icon, now she is still an inspiration but also a good friend.”

If things go according to plan, the pair will meet again competitively at the first FIS Freeride World Championships in February.

Physical and mental preparation

Reigning FWT champion Marcus Goguen combined skiing and mountain biking in his youth, making the Elite World Cup circuit in the latter. From a young age, he skied in Whistler (CAN) with fellow future FWT rider Weitien Ho, who won last season’s Xtreme Verbier.

Goguen took victory on the infamous Bec des Rosses the season before with a run that scared even himself. In a video review of that winning descent, he reveals before successfully making a double jump that, “This is where I was, like, ‘I might die.’”

Reflecting on that run and his thoughts, he said, “Obviously we don't aim for that. But with our experience, luckily, usually that isn't the case. When we're doing a traverse over massive exposure, there's always possibilities of stuff like that happening. But for me, in that case, I was purposely going over that exposure. And this was all from visual inspection, so I had confidence.

“I need to have full confidence that I'm going to be able to do it before I do it, or else I'm not going to do it. I was sure it was going to work. But, still, the last moment when I was coming over that, I was like, ‘This is a lot gnarlier than I was expecting.’ And just the sheer steepness of that whole face, my legs were already tired halfway down, and the biggest impacts were yet to come.

“There were a lot of things going through my mind, and I was definitely nervous and unsure whether it was going to work at that point. And when I popped off that first drop, I thought I had gone too far and was going to land on the rocks of the second stage. I think I might have yelped in the air or something. And luckily, I just skipped and bounced and somehow made it out. But, yeah, that was probably the scariest thing I've done on skis.”

The natural obstacles presented by the mountain, and the lack of practice beforehand, make Freeride a dangerous sport. The athletes do get to ‘scope’ the slope in advance, and that is key to their visualization and mental preparation.

“Every time I'm looking at doing a new trick, a new cliff, or a new line on a competition face, I'm always taking the dangers into account,” says Goguen. “The way for me to be safe is to look at all the possible things that could happen. Then I train my mind to focus on all the positives after that, so I avoid doing all the things that could lead me to doing a negative error. And with that, I'm able to picture my mind, visualise myself succeeding in that error.

“And even when I'm visualising these lines or these new tricks, errors still happen. Sometimes in my mind, I'll even crash. So what that tells me is I'm not quite confident in my abilities for that, or I just need to continue practicing until I've got it locked into my mind before I do it onto the snow.”

While some of the scoping these days is done digitally, Equy completes her preparations with old-fashioned pen and paper. “What I like to do is write the run I'm going to do,” she says. “Sometimes it takes me one or two pages, and I just write every little thing like, ‘You go on the right side, you turn after the tree…’

“I just write everything down and it helps me be sure that I know the run in my mind. Because sometimes, I’m like, ‘OK, I know the run. It’s going to be fine.’ And other times I think, ‘What’s next?’ I’m confused.’ So it helps me to learn my line.”

De Le Rue says snowboarding on the FWT is largely less risky than skiing, with one exception. “For the skiers, it’s a different game because of the risks they take,” he admits. “The tools they have are much more stable so they can jump so much bigger. And then the consequences are much higher.

“On the FWT, I’m never scared of getting badly injured or dying. Except in Verbier sometimes. Verbier is a different story.”

After suffering a number of knee and back injuries in his youth, Goguen takes physical fitness very seriously and has developed an app based on his experiences. “When I was around 12, 13 years old, every pow day I would just go big,” he says. “I felt like I was invincible. But after two full seasons of that, my body started to give out on me; I had a slipped disc in my back and my knees were constantly aching like a sort of tendinitis.

“I realized I had to change something if I wanted to keep up with my mental progression, because my mind was always chasing for the best but my body wasn't able to keep up. So that next summer, I started training. I reached out to gym trainers, and we started making a bit of a system together.

“For the next five years, I was consistently training, consistently getting stronger, and that automatically transfered to my skiing so I was more consistent in competitions. I was more mentally confident because I knew I was able to take these big impacts. I just felt faster and more agile all round. I've kind of put it all together in an app so that everybody can experience that, and hopefully not experience those pains that I faced.”

For others, skiing is the best training tool in terms of fitness and sharpening skills. “I know people that don't even go to the gym and still are among the best Freeride skiers,” says Rafford. “If you ski a bunch, you have to be healthy. You have to be an athlete, and I've been trying to be better at that. But I wouldn't say that you have to be, you know, a gym rat or built like Marcus Goguen!

“If you're taking care of your body and you love to ski and you ski a lot and you do other stuff in the off-season, I think that you'll be sweet. I mean, if you love going to the gym or whatever, it's all good and it will probably benefit you.”

How Freeride coaching and training has evolved

When the FWT was first contested in 2008, Freeride was very much an individual activity with athletes relying on themselves and their fellow competitors. In recent years, coaches have joined the fray although some athletes still go it alone.

De Le Rue is one rider who has seen it from both sides. “I’ve had a mental coach for four or five years which has helped a lot,” he reveals. “I’m now part of a team at Val Thorens so there are two coaches that take care of a bunch of kids and a few riders on the Tour. This is going to be the second year, and it’s something new because I never had a coach in Freestyle or Freeride before and I’m now 36.

“I kind of learned everything myself but now, over time, coaching has come in. It’s maybe a bit weird in a way to change my habits now but, for sure, it’s so great for all the newcomers to have people give them good tips at the beginning. I really like the coaches because they know the resort better than anybody else, and they’re pro riders as well.”

While most European riders have dedicated coaches, the North Americans - with the notable exception of Dufour-Lapointe who works with former FWT pro Stefan Häusl - generally have more informal teams around them. For Goguen, the Whistler Freeride Club has been key with FWT announcer Derek Foose one of the head coaches there.

“To have him traveling around the world is great and I'm still able to bounce questions off of him,” says Goguen of Foose. “He's still a coach for me in a way but, now I'm on the tour, I'm kind of going solo, just chatting with buddies here and there. I don’t have a huge support system other than the system that I've built in the gym.

Rafford labels himself a “one-man team” and calls fellow competitors like Goguen, Ho, Ben Richards and Ross Tester his coaches. “I read a lot of books and watch my friends ski and that’s like the best coaching ever,” he says. “We’re always asking each other about what we think when we’re going skiing and competing and, for now, that’s pretty good for me.”

A rare European rider without a coach is Kohler although she admits, “My team is my friends and other riders like Valle Rainer who I go skiing with a lot. I feel like the boys in Innsbruck and my group of friends are pushing me and always giving me tips.

“I wish I had a coach but I want to have someone I feel 100% comfortable with. I have one person in mind but he’s not free right now, so I’m still looking for someone to help with competitions and training.”

With no way of replicating conditions for a Freeride competition, there is very little that can prepare the riders for the ultimate test at the top of a mountain.

When asked how he trains for Freeride, Rafford says, “Just skiing, and you’re just ready. I mean, Freeride is hard to practice for. And that’s why I think, personally, the skiers from New Zealand are super-strong because they ski in the worst conditions ever. Then they come over here and ski in pretty good conditions as well as variable stuff.“

“I think it's important to train in many disciplines and many conditions and, for sure, it helped to compete before in Slopestyle,” says Equy. “When I was younger, I did other disciplines like Snowboard Cross and Slalom, and this means I’m a good snowboarder in terms of technique.

“The main thing you have to train, and which is hard when you go into Freeride, is reading the mountains, reading the lines, and finding the good line.”

At Ordino Arcalis (AND) in February, these athletes will have the chance to win the sport’s first global title at the FIS Freeride World Championships.

What is Freeride