Hedvig Wessel and Max Hitzig are the Freeride World Tour Champions

The Xtreme Verbier had been moved ahead of schedule by a day due to the weather forecast, but a huge crowd of freeride fans gathered nevertheless at the bottom of the infamous north face of 3,223 m high Bec des Rosses. It’s a huge wall of rock and snow, rising 600 m above the finish with the upper two thirds being strictly beyond 45 degrees steep—by far the most intimidating venue of the Freeride World Tour and a more than worthy proving ground for the world’s best big mountain athletes. The snow cover was soft but not too deep, so ideal for fast riding and big jumps. There was a bit of a high cloud cover hazing the sun, but with a slight delay the riders got on their way at 10:15 in perfect conditions.

The men had the chance to start from the very top of the Bec des Rosses this year, making it the first time this happened at the Xtreme Verbier since 2018. In the Snowboard Men’s category Jonathan Penfield from the United States took the victory and spoiled the almost perfect season of France’s Victor De Le Rue, who had won all four events on the tour and thus already was confirmed as overall winner. Then the Ski Men were up as the last category of the day but some clouds obstructed the vision and put the competition on hold, further building up tension. The top of the Bec des Rosses surely isn’t the most comfortable place to kill time. Nevertheless, when the skiers finally dropped in after almost an hour of waiting, they seemed unaffected.

Oscar Mandin from France set the tone as first rider with a fluent run down the steepest section of the face looker’s right of the main couloir, throwing two big backflips off sizable cliffs on the way. His score of 90.00 points lasted a while but in the end he finished just outside the podium in fourth. It’s another example of how much the level has gone up this season since the last time skiers went from the top of the Bec, this run would’ve most likely been enough for the victory. The next couple of riders then set out for what was dubbed the “freestyler’s line” by the livestream commentator. That meant clearing a big cliff on top of this massive face with a trick—admittedly into the only bigger patch of uninterrupted snow on the whole mountain—, skiing an incredibly steep couloir and then sending another huge cliff at the bottom with another trick. Verbier local and tour rookie Martin Bender attempted the lower cliff with a cork 720 but unfortunately double-ejected at the landing, resulting in the only no-score-result for the Ski Men’s. Former tour champions Maxime Chabloz and Valentin Rainer skied this line fluently and with clean tricks, putting them in sixth and seventh position respectively—Valle Rainer had one slightly shaky landing. A little more trouble had Japanese skier Tenra Katsuno on this line, who almost high-sided while controlling the landing of his 360 up top, consequently finishing in eighth place just in front of Kristofer Turdell, who had a very uncharacteristic over-the-bars landing on a backflip. The upside of Kristofer’s bad luck for all freeride fans might be that it raises the chances that we will see the Swedish veteran on the tour again next season.

To make it to the upper half of the result list, skiers had to deviate from the main couloir into the super hefty main face area where your line will always be cliffed-out no matter where you go. The first rider to do so, and to push Oscar Mandin out of the hot seat in the process, was Finn Bilous. The former Olympian for New Zealand in Slopestyle chose the “true big mountain” approach in order to show respect to the Bec, as he had said the day before the event. Finn skied super fluently through the technical upper section, landed a 360 off the Hollywood cliff cleanly—making him the first rider to trick this infamous feature ever—and threw in a flat 3 plus another big cliff drop for good measure. His run was arguably the cleanest of all high-hitting performances but he opted for the side-entrance to the face at the very top which might have costed him an even higher score. Still a very well deserved third place at the Xtreme and a fourth place overall, just ahead of Kristofer Turdell. Ben Richards came in with confidence following his victory in Fieberbrunn and he entered the steepest section straight, but a slight problem with slough handling cost him enough to relegate him to fifth position despite a clean drop off the Hollywood cliff, a massive 360 off another sizable cliff further down and his trademark fast skiing. He kept his podium spot in the overall tour rankings, though, just ahead of fellow kiwi Finn Bilous.

The 2024 Freeride World Tour is a wrap and it surely will stay in the collective memory of freeride skiing. Both women and men have raised the bar with outstanding performances, creating one spectacle after the other from tour stop to tour stop and providing arguably the most thrilling tour showdown in history. What really separates this season from past ones, though, is the consistency of the outstanding performance level, both within each event throughout the whole field of competitors and within the season from event to event. There have been plenty of memorable runs in the past, but this year every winning run was one for the history books, and there were runs of equal caliber that simply weren’t enough to win. And to make it to the upper half of the results table, skiers had to invariably throw tricks with clean landings off the biggest features of the venue and to ski fast through the steepest and most technical zones. Gone are the times when a safety run could eventually land you a decent spot due to the fellow competitors’ mistakes. It’s the result of a new generation having taken over that was raised on junior programs with experienced coaches, years of building experience in junior and qualifying competitions and an all-round approach in preparation, both physically and mentally. And that’s a good thing!

There is no reason to expect anything different next year. Almost all riders on this year’s Freeride World Tour are young and most will be eager to compete for at least a few more years, while new talent is coming up from the challenger series for sure. It remains to be seen if Hedvig Wessel will call it quits for good after she has finally achieved her big goal, but the pair of French youngsters—Astrid Cheylus and Manon Loschi—will keep pushing the limits with tricks and creative lines. In the men’s, we might see another duel between Max Hitzig and Marcus Goguen. Max had five podiums this season and Marcus four with only a slip at the very first event of the season, and both had two victories each leaving only one win to the rest of the field. But the NZ crew of Finn Bilous and Ben Richards wasn’t too far off and established riders like the former tour champions Kristofer Turdell, Maxime Chabloz and Valentin Rainer all showed very solid skiing throughout the season, safely qualifying back for next year’s FWT. They simply missed the outbursts of excellence this season that propelled them to their titles in the past. They are surely still capable of bringing that back, though. We’ll see in 2025!