Where did freestyle skiing originate?

Answer 1

According to the page linked to the right, "What is Freestyle Skiing,": Freestyle skiing was organized in Canada in 1974 by John Johnston, Moguls has had full medal status in the Olympics since 1992 with Aerials acceptance into the Olympics in 1994. There is probably more to the story than this. There is a lot more to the story. John Johnston was instrumental in organizing Freestyle Skiing in Canada, but it really originated in the US prior to '74. Not to discount a few random and early "flips" by Stein Erickson and others in the 60's, freestyle skiing's main tap root can be traced to group of "hotdoggers", including Canadians and Europeans, who were brought together in the early 70's by Skiing Mag (or was it Ski?) at Sun Valley and Jackson Hole (etc) to compete for an automobile. There were no rules to speak of so the wildest or craziest run would win. It also resulted in serious injuries, so the competitors got together to form a regulatory body. I was the attorney and I formed a nonprofit called International Freestyle Skiing Association for them in 1973. I attended the competitions and tried to help them make sense of it all (mostly late at night while they were wrangling over rule changes for the next morning!!) The competitor were literally inventing this new sport on the fly, often changing the rules between competitions. Summer of 1974, they asked me to organize the business side of the tour to give it more stability. I formed a corporation called Professional Freestyle Associates, which then negotiated contracts with ABC Wide World of Sports, CBC in Canada and Eurovision, which then enable us to sign Midas Muffler, Colgate for the Women's competition, plus European and Canadian Sponsors. The competitors, through their nonprofit association, put together the rules, the format, trained the judges, etc, so that I could then produce the competitions. Our agreement was that the rules could only be changed in the summer, and had to be consistent for the entire season. In PFA's first year, winter of '74/'75, we produced 8 competitions, 4 in the US, 3 in Europe and 1 in Canada with a total of about a half-million in prize money (not bad at the time.) (Plus some regional "ingress" competitions to allow new competitors entry.) We did the same thing in '75/'76. However, the wheels started coming off in '76/'77 due to liability and maturity issues. The sport was too new and too different (Ballet?) at the time and the establishment (racers, ski instructors, long-ski devotees) did not like it. Many hated it. It had never had a youth program, or coaches, let alone any discipline. The resorts banned inverted aerials and without that there was no national TV. So the professional competitions in the US petered out, but some of the competitors started camps and youth programs and grew it from the ground up, which is really what it needed to gain credibility. Amateur competitions continued, ISF sanctioned it, inverted aerials were restored and the rest as they say is well documented history. The best writing that I know of regarding the origins of freestyle skiing can be found in the July 1976 (I think -- Donnie Osmand on the cover) issue of Rolling Stone Magazine, article by Lucian Truscott IV. It is very comprehensive coverage of the origins of the sport.

Answer 2

Ty McLennan created the sport in 1926