Freestyle skiing owes its beginning to the Norwegian skiers who performed acrobatics while they were on alpine and cross-country skiing training.
These
freestyle acrobatic skills were later presented in many non-competitive professional
skiing exhibitions and gained immense popularity.
Freestyle skiing gained importance in the mid 20 th century when it was popularly known as “hot-dogging”.
Freestyle skiing was not a very safe sport as it caused severe knee injuries to the free style skiers.
Freestyle skiing was not accepted as a sport form in competitions for many years keeping in mind the dangers associated with it. But with time, new regulations were implemented on the game so that the danger elements of the game could be curbed to certain extent. Presently,
freestyle skiing is divided into
two branches . The first
branch comprises of the more traditional events of
freestyle skiing namely moguls and aerials. The new
branch of
freestyle skiing is called new school and encompasses events like half pipe, big air, slope style and skier cross. Specially designed twin-tip skis are prepared by various ski equipment manufacturing companies for free stylers. These special ski equipments help in enhancing the pleasures of
freestyle skiing along with ensuring safety of the skiers. As
freestyle skiing is a combination of
skiing techniques with acrobatic skills, watching this type of sport is really exciting. There are many
varieties of
freestyle ski tricks that are performed like 180, 360, 540 Tail Grab, Corkscrew 720, D Spin 720 etc.