Olympic Winter Games Milano Cortina 2026 Preview: Freestyle Skiing

Freestyle skiing is the umbrella term for moguls, aerials, and the freeski disciplines of slopestyle, halfpipe, big air, and skier cross. 


For the Olympic Winter Games Milano Cortina 2026, these sports will be held in Livigno, Italy, near the Swiss border. The Livigno Moguls & Aerials Park as well as the Livigno Snow Park were constructed specifically for the Games and will centralize freestyle skiing and snowboarding in one center. 
Livigno is located about 3.5 hours northeast of Milan and 5.5 hours west of Cortina.

Freestyle skiing was born in the 1960s in the U.S., an antidote to the more regimented discipline of ski racing. Former ski racers like 1968 Olympian Suzy “Chapstick” Chaffee took up freestyle as a way to be more expressive on the slopes, with quick turns in the moguls, spread eagles and other tricks off the bigger bumps, and ballet on flatter terrain. Freeskiing in the park and halfpipe would come along later (more on freeskiing below). 


Freestyle was a demonstration sport at the Olympic Winter Games Calgary 1988, with moguls, aerials and ballet on the schedule. Four years later, moguls became a medal sport, with aerials added to the Olympic Winter Games program in 1994. (Ballet was dropped.)
Mixed team aerials was added to the Olympic Winter Games program in 2022 at Beijing with Team USA claiming gold.

At Milano Cortina, dual moguls makes its Olympic Winter Games debut. The side-by-side racing format has long been a strong suit of Team USA moguls skiers.


Moguls: At the 1992 Olympic Winter Games, Team USA’s Donna Weinbrecht and Nelson Carmichael made a statement in the inaugural moguls competitions, taking gold and bronze, respectively. Since then, American women have continued to make the podium, with Hannah Kearney winning gold at Vancouver 2010 (and bronze four years later). Jaelin Kauf is the most recent U.S. freestyle skier to win an Olympic Winter Games medal in moguls. She won a silver at Beijing 2022.

Aerials: Eric Bergoust and Nikki Stone won gold in 1998. The late Jeret “Speedy” Peterson was the last American man to win an Olympic medal in aerials (silver in 2010) when he landed his famed multi-spinning, twisting “Hurricane.” Megan Nick is the most recent American to win an Olympic Winter Games medal in aerials as she earned bronze at Beijing in 2022.

Moguls: Kauf is a favorite to win Olympic Winter Games gold this time. Last season, she dominated, taking both the moguls and dual moguls world cup titles. Her teammates are no strangers to the podium either, including world championship dual moguls silver medalist Tess Johnson, Olivia Giacco (who finished second in the first World Cup of the Olympic Games season), and former junior world champion and 2023 FIS moguls Rookie of the Year Alli Macuga.


Aerials: Team USA is the defending gold medalist in the mixed team event (as well as the two-time defending mixed team world champions), and Chris Lillis will be hoping for more wins at Milano Cortina 2026. He has consistently finished on the World Cup podium for the past two seasons — a good sign going into an Olympic year. 


His teammate Quinn Dehlinger was also on the mixed team winning the past two world championship titles. Dehlinger also claimed back-to-back silver medals in individual competition at the 2023 and 2025 world champs. The 23-year-old from Cincinnati, Ohio, will be competing in his first Olympic Games.


Traditional freestyle skiing competition — moguls and aerials — begins on February 11. Medals will be awarded on:

February 11 (Women’s Moguls)

February 12 (Men’s Moguls)

February 14 (Women’s Dual Moguls)

February 15 (Men’s Dual Moguls)



February 18 (Women’s Aerials)

February 19 (Men’s Aerials)

February 21 (Mixed Team Aerials)

Twenty years after freestyle skiing became popular, a new breed of skiers were inspired by moves snowboarders were making in the ‘pipe and park and the clothes and cool factor that they brought to the slopes. Freeskiing was born, with skiers soaring on twin-tip skis, doing many of the same tricks in the halfpipe and slopestyle park as their snowboarding cousins.

Popular at the Winter X Games, freeski events were added to the Olympic Winter Games program in 2014, with the USA making an immediate statement.


In 2022, Big Air became an Olympic Winter Games sport. Athletes do breathtaking spins and flips with names like triple 2160 mule (six full spins) and switch quad cork and judges score each run. The skier with the highest scoring run wins the contest.



Men: The U.S. men have been extraordinarily successful in freeskiing competition. At slopestyle’s debut in 2014, Team USA swept the podium, with Joss Christiansen, Gus Kenworthy, and Nick Goepper finish one-two-three. Since then, Goepper has claimed two more Olympic Winter Games medals: silvers at the 2018 and 2022 Winter Games. In 2022, his teammate Alex Hall claimed gold.


The men have been almost as successful in freeski halfpipe. David Wise claimed back-to-back golds in 2014 and 2018, then took silver in 2022. Alex Ferreira wasn’t far behind, earning silver in 2018 and bronze in 2022. In Big Air’s Olympic Winter Games debut in 2022, Colby Stevenson earned a silver medal.



Women: The U.S. women have not enjoyed quite the same success in Olympic freeski competition. To date, Devin Logan (silver in slopestyle, 2014) and Brita Sigourney (bronze in halfpipe, 2018) are the only U.S. women to have earned Olympic Winter Games medals in freeskiing.

Ferreira, Goepper, Hall, Stevenson and Wise are all back, hoping for another shot at Olympic medals in 2026. Ferreira — now a member of the elite Team Stifel (a team within the Stifel U.S. Ski Team) — claimed the overall halfpipe world cup title last season, with Goepper ranked second. The previous season, Ferriera became the first skier to tally a perfect season in halfpipe, winning all of the seven major competitions, including his third X Games gold medal, 5 World Cups, and the Dew Tour. Hall ended the 2025 season atop the slopestyle world cup rankings, with Stevenson in third. 


New on the horizon: Troy Podmilsak, who won the Big Air title at the 2023 world championships. The 21-year-old freeskier from Park City, Utah, won the first world cup Big Air competition of the season ahead of the Olympic Winter Games. And 2022 Olympian Mac Forehand will be looking to make his mark in the medals this go-round. The 24-year-old is the 2025 world championship silver medalist in slopestyle, finishing just ahead of bronze medalist Hall.

Freeskiing competition begins on February 9 with medals awarded on:

February 9 (Women’s Freeski Slopestyle)

February 10 (Men’s Freeski Slopestyle)

February 16 (Women’s Freeski Big Air)

February 17 (Men’s Freeski Big Air)

February 20 (Women’s Skier cross and Men’s Halfpipe)

February 21 (Men’s Skier Cross and Women’s Halfpipe)