Freeski slopestyle season preview 2022/23

After a blockbuster start to the season on 21 October at the Big Air Chur festival, the 2022/23 FIS Freeski World Cup gets back to action from 18-19 November with the first slopestyle competition of the winter, at the Stubai Zoo in Austria.

Stubai will be the first of six FIS Freeski slopestyle World Cup competitions to go down in 2022/23, and with the Bakuriani 2023 FIS Snowboard, Freestyle and Freeski World Championships lined up for late February it’s shaping up to be a busy winter of slopestyle action indeed.

Post-Olympic seasons are always interesting as an army of new blood joins the World Cup tour, longstanding veterans reassess their place in the competition world, and in-their-prime elite athletes look to reassert their dominance as we start a fresh four-year cycle building towards the Milano-Cortina 2026 Olympic Winter Games.

Read on as we take a look ahead at what to expect from the next four-and-a-half months of action on the FIS Freeski slopestyle World Cup tour.

WHO TO WATCH – WOMEN

Beijing 2022 gold medallist – Mathilde Gremaud (SUI)

Aspen 2021 World Champion – Eileen Gu (CHN)

2021/22 crystal globe winner – Kelly Sildaru (EST)

While she was already arguably the biggest name in freeskiing before the Beijing 2022 Olympic Winter Games, by the end of O-Show last season Eileen Gu (CHN) had established herself not just as the biggest name in snowsports, but as one of the most recognisable figures in the entire sporting world.

With two golds and a silver there in China while representing the host country, Gu’s Olympic debut performance but her on a rocketship to the sun, exposure-wise, and the 19-year-old’s incredible talents more than back up the hype.

Gu is the standard by which all other freeskiers in the women’s field are now measured. However, just when the rest of the field will once again have their opportunity to measure themselves against Gu is a question we don’t have an answer for at this point, as the freeski queen is currently enrolled at Stanford University, racking up a different kind of 90.00+ score – in between international modelling gigs and red carpet appearances.

Though we’ve heard whispers Gu will be back in the bib in the new year, at this point we don’t really know if she has solid plans to compete this season. So, it’s ‘wait and see’ on that front.

With all of the above being said, it wasn’t actually Gu who took the biggest slopestyle prize of last season, as Switzerland’s Mathilde Gremaud faced down the fierce Gu challenge to walk away with Beijing 2022 gold.