The Freeride World Tour (FWT) was first introduced to the world in 2008 and has since been one of the most influential competitions in skiing & snowboarding. 60 athletes have been crowned champions in their respective discipline since the beginning, all while catching the eyes of millions of fans.
Their qualification process, however, has always been a little bit confusing. So, in order to clear up confusion and make the brand’s identity a bit more whole, Freeride World Tour has introduced a new “Sport Pyramid”.
What does this Sport Pyramid change? Not much, aside from names. Each series leading up to the professional level has now been placed under the Freeride World Tour title, so rather than the qualifying series holding the title “Freeride World Qualifier”, it’s now referred to as the “Freeride World Tour Qualifier“. Two other series have been placed under this name change, with the Freeride World Tour Junior and the Freeride World Tour Challenger.
So how, then, do each of these tiers function? Again, that really hasn’t changed, but since I’ve been fairly confused by it for quite a while and I’m only now really starting to understand, I’ll give you a bit of a rundown.
Athletes under the age of 18 are set to compete in the Freeride World Tour Junior series. With the new setup, this simply allows young skiers and snowboarders to develop as freeride competitors and build up their global rankings before being able to really climb their way up the pyramid.
The Freeride World Tour Qualifier contains four separate categories for competitors, 1*, 2*, 3*, and 4* events. Every event in each of these categories allow athletes to pick up points towards qualifying for the Challenger series, but 4*s, as the most difficult, offer the most. There are a ton of qualifier events all over the United States, Canada, and Europe, so, if you’re interested, make sure to check out the schedule.
The Freeride World Tour Challenger is the gateway series to the Freeride World Tour. Around 140 athletes total compete in the series, 40-60 athletes from each region of the Qualifier series and 20-25 riders who failed to qualify for the Freeride World Tour Finals. Each region has three events (riders only compete in one region), and competitors take their two best results out of the three. The top four ski men, two ski women, two snowboard men, and two snowboard women from the two regions will enter the FWT pro series the following season, for a total of 18.
Finally, of course, there’s the pro series, which I’ll leave to you to understand. The Freeride World Tour 2023 kicks off at Kicking Horse between January 13 and 18th, and you can bet we’ll be discussing it here!
Image Credit: Freeride World Tour via YouTube