Thursday, March 14, 2024, a date to remember, a stage of the Freeride World Cup circuit, the FWT Challenger, is coming to Gressoney for the first time.
The Freeride World Tour is an international circuit of professional freeride, big mountain skiing and snowboarding competitions that has been held annually since 2008 in various mountain locations around the world.
It originated in 1996 as part of the Verbier Extreme competition.
The first series of events under the name FWT took place precisely in 2008 at the initiative of Nissan and the organizers of several European freeride competitions, 5 stages were set and the largest amount of money ever established for an off-piste ski competition was allocated as a prize.
Since 2013 the FWT has been sponsored by Swatch and The North Face, also in that year merging with the older Freeskiing World Tour and The North Face Masters of Snowboarding, combining all 3 events into one global Tour.
In 2022 under the presidency of Johan Eliasch the FWT is purchased by the International Ski and Snowboard Federation.
There are 4 competitions organized within the FWT:
FWT Pro
World snowboard and freeride ski circuit.
The best athletes in the world participate; sometimes limited wild cards (permission to participate) are offered to established athletes that allow them to compete without going through qualifying.
FWT Challenger
The final step toward qualifying for the FWT Pro.
The top FWT qualifier riders compete against the FWT Pro runners-up to earn a spot on the next year's major circuit.
FWT Qualifier
This is the world qualifying circuit designed to develop the talent and skills of up-and-coming riders.
Riders accumulate points through 60 events held around the world, including 40 in Europe.
The scoring system is based on the star ranking of the qualifying events and the event regions, Region 1 (Europe-Asia-Oceania) Region 2 (United States-Canada-Chile-Argentina).
The best from each region advance to the FWT Challenger.
FWT Junior
This is the circuit dedicated to young people up to the age of 18, with the aim of developing future talent and encouraging young people to participate in the sport.
