“I was feeling good and I felt like I could definitely compete and was kind of hoping to at least get one or maybe two wins from the season. But I definitely didn’t expect to hold that consistency throughout the whole winter.”
As Richards describes it, freeride is a sport where athletes are “plonked at the top” of a natural mountain terrain and can do whatever they want on their way to the bottom of the slope.
“It is pretty high risk and I feel like the body, especially at this time of year, is feeling it,” he said.
“There’s a lot of impact and stuff that kind of piles up throughout the winter. But for the most part, I’ve been pretty lucky with injuries and staying relatively safe, but you know, a couple broken bones here and there.”
Judging for the sport is based on five categories: air and style, line taken, difficulty, fluidity and risk.
“But it’s pretty loose, honestly,” Richards said.
“It’s basically a mixture of how big you can go and what tricks you can do, but also how fast you can ski and how much control you have.”
Like the World Surf League, the Freeride World Tour has a qualification structure. Athletes begin in qualifiers to try to earn a place on the Challenger Series. From there, riders are able to earn spots on the World Tour.
The sport was recognised by the International Ski and Snowboard Federation (FIS) as an official discipline in 2024 and appears on track to debut at the 2030 Winter Olympics in the French Alps.
It could be a sport to keep an eye on, as Richards said New Zealand is producing plenty of talented athletes in the discipline.
“It’s pretty strong, especially given how small we are as a nation and how small snow sports actually are,” he says.
“We’ve got a lot of really good up-and-coming skiers in the discipline. We even had a junior world champion [Hamish Henderson] this year as well, so I think the sport’s in safe hands.”
Christopher Reive joined the Herald sports team in 2017, bringing the same versatility to his coverage as he does to his sports viewing habits.
