A Brief Look at How Freestyle Skiing All Began

The history of freestyle skiing can be traced to the early thirties and to Norway where skiers made changes to the way that skiing was normally done and which involved the addition of acrobatics to the practice of cross country as well as alpine ski training methods. It took some time for freestyle skiing to become popular in the United States where at first there were just a few skiing displays (non-competitive) in which skiers began performing in what was later to be called freestyle skiing.

Jamie Hamilton

It was only in the year 1946 that a Canadian skier, Jamie Hamilton from Erin in Ontario came up with the perfect seven hundred and twenty degree spin. This was to lead to further improvements and in fact another excellent proponent of what was to become freestyle skiing, a German named Jeremy Wedels improved on Hamilton’s spin by coming up with an astounding one thousand and eighty degree spin.

The sixties as too the seventies was to see further developments in freestyle skiing and at that time this form of skiing was popularly referred to as hot-dogging and one of the pioneers of this form skiing was the famous Bob Burns who pioneered freestyle skiing in Sun Valley in Idaho in the year 1965. This was to be followed by Wayne Woong as well as by a few other notable specialists.

Many people at the time when freestyle skiing was gaining in popularity believed this form of skiing to be a bit too dangerous and so opposed its addition into the Olympic Games. The fact of the matter was that the sport did not have too many rules and it was in fact quite dangerous with skiers often injuring their knees.

The sport of freestyle skiing became more organized though the skiing was practiced on mogul fields that boasted of terrain that was naturally bumpy and so it aided the skiers in performing their tricks and jumps and which also allowed them to really do some truly amazing turns and it was these freestyle skiing exponents that were to become the first hot doggers. However, it was only in the year 1988 that freestyle skiing was entered as a demonstration sport in the Calgary Winter Olympics and it became an Olympic sport in the year 1992 at the Winter Olympics that was held in Albertville (mogul skiing) while aerials were added in the Winter Olympics held in Lillehammer two years later in the year 1994.

Freestyle skiing contains various aspects of skiing along with some aspects of acrobatics and this has led to the development of several interesting freestyle skiing tricks. It pays to know what these tricks are and in fact there are many such tricks that will actually bemuse you unless and until you can ski with great conviction.