Freestyle

Acrobatic or freestyle skiing is one of the youngest winter sports and more or less mirrors snowboarding events, but with the use of skis rather than a snowboard.

As it is a rapidly growing sport, especially in the university environment, freestyle skiing was introduced for the first time in the programme of the Universiade during the 2005 Austrian edition, held in Innsbruck.

At that time it was decided to present Ski Cross as a demonstrative discipline, preparing special courses, on which groups of four or six athletes competed in order to determine the fastest down a slope characterised by continuous jumps and obstacles.

The success of this first attempt to introduce the sport confirmed that freestyle skiing was a discipline of interest for FISU.

At the 2015 Winter Universiade in Granada, the alpine skiing events will take place on ski runs in Sierra Nevada.