While the inaugural joint FIS Snowboard & Freestyle Junior World Championships are in full swing and will continue until August 31st, we took the chance to talk to the FIS Freestyle Skiing coordinator Joe Fitzgerald who has been following the competitions at Lake Wanaka, New Zealand.
Q: Can you comment on these championships and this competition...
A: Joe Fitzgerald: There were some great developments in the world of freestyle skiing over the past few years as the discipline went back to its roots and ski slopestyle competitions were added to the programme.
There is an overwhelming amount of activities going on in terrain parks in pretty much every major skiing nation in the world. Our survey shows that there are at least 700 parks in every continent (Antarctica excluded). In this beautiful valley of Cardrona here in New Zealand, there are two parks within 10 kilometers of each other and a national competition series for skiers from 10 to 15 years of age. What stands out is the level of interest of young skiers and snowboarders in learning, practicing and wanting to test their skills against themselves and their friends.
This 1st FIS Freestyle Junior World Championships is a natural extension of all the developments where the competitors and National Ski Associations want to show their skiers' skills. The technical skills of all competitors are amazing and the tricks they do are great to watch. The show they put on is pure freestyle skiing, which is creative, innovative and all about catching air.
Ski slopestyle is developing rapidly and it has great future potential mainly also due to the interest of skiers and national ski associations in organizing a World Cups series and World Championships.
Together with the well established events in moguls and aerials, the newly added Olympic ski cross event, along with the recent developments in ski halfpipe and ski slopestyle we have pretty much all of the ski slopes in a ski resort covered.
