Freeride Athletes Turn on the Heat at Hotham

Mountainwatch | Reggae Elliss

Australia’s best freeride skiers and snowboarders descended on Mt Hotham last week, in town for the Freeride World Tour Qualifier and junior events, both sanctioned as two-star competitions.

Hotham has long held a reputation as Australia’s freeride mountain, it’s steep and varied terrain the perfect freeride canvas and it home to some of Australia’s best freeride skiers and boarders. However, as we all know, all of Australia’s resorts offer fun freeride terrain and produce a lot of skiing and snowboarding talent, something that was obvious when riding Heavenly Chair on Thursday morning before the comp started.

After 10cms overnight and additional wind-loading the snow was excellent, light powder and the crew were hitting every natural feature during the pre-event warm-up. It was rare opportunity to watch that much talent in the one place, each chairlift ride like watching a live movie.

The event was held in Peach Bowl, skiers right at the top of Heavenly, and the zone featured several natural features towards complemented with a couple of built towards the top of the course.  The fresh snow was dry, and conditions allowed the athletes to go for it with no hard-packed landings although the final cliff drop was solid. If you went too big the landing was flat, and it claimed a few competitors.

Although it was mainly fine on Thursday, low cloudy and intermittent visibility lead to a number of delays and organisers could only finish the snowboard divisions. The men’s and women’s ski were held over to the Friday weather day.

The standard of riding in the snowboarding was impressive with progressive riding and some moves off the features. but there’ no doubt NSW’s Vaughn Hardwick was the standout and clear winner. Vaughn, aged 20, competed on the Freeride Junior Tour for a few years  finishing the 2024 season ranked number one. Last year, his first year in opens, he finished 14^th on the Challenger rankings and will be representing Australia at the World championships in Andorra next February

Vaughn knows the judging criteria well and his experience was on show as rode the perfect line, hitting all the features with a sold back flip off the top jump and smooth 360 off the bottom cliff.  Each hit was linked together with fast smooth turns, scoring 89 points from the judges.

In the women’s, Lara Nievergelt also rode well, confidently putting down some  solid moves and score 70 points .

While skiers were frustrated with the in and out visibility on Thursday and the delayed start, they were happy with the conditions on Friday. Cold overnight temps kept the snow in good shape, and despite the high cloud, visibility was 100%.

The skiing was red-hot from the get-go, the athletes putting down fast flowing runs, the best using all the features and aggressively hitting the bottom cliff band. It was a high scoring affair in the men’s Buller’s Charlie Comben and last year’s winer, put down an insane run, including a huge dub-7 off the top feature, garnering a huge score of 96.33 from the judges.

In the women’s Gabrielle Lacaze  laid down some fast solid turns through the course before hitting the bottom cliff with full commitment, impressing the judges and scoring 85 points.

Unfortunately, last weekend’s storm and the associated wind and poor visibility lead to the cancelation of the Junior event, a huge disappointment for the junior athletes.

Overall, it was great event and showcased the depth of Australia’s freeride talent. Freeride is now a FIS sport and a recognised pathway for Australian athletes and will most likely be included in the 2030 Winter Olympics.

For Australia’s freeride athletes having sanctioned events here is an important step to building points on the world qualifying rankings, potentially leading to a career on the tour. Australian athletes are already doing that with Michaela Davis-Meehan finishing second on the 2025 Freeride Tour, while fellow snowboarders Briony Johnson and Vaughn Hardwick and skier Zanna Farrel competing on the Challenger Tour.

Briony Johnson is also Hotham’s terrain park manager and was on hand to draw on her freeride experience as a judge for the event.  “The riders really put on a show, I was having a great time sitting in the judges seat watching,” Briony said. ” There was some big manoeuvres being thrown and stomped, overall it was really impressive! It’s exciting to see the level being pushed in an event such as a two-star where the air and style really comes into play.”

The Hotham event shows that freeride comps definitely have a place in Australian snowsports and hopefully we’ll see sanctioned events in other resorts soon. It seems a logical step as more resorts are now offering freeride programs and we’ll see more athletes choose that path ahead of other, more structured, disciplines.

“It’s a proud moment to have Hotham host a freeride event,” Briony added. ” What’s even more exciting is being apart of the movement and growth in the sport. There are so many young athletes finding their feet and rhythm in freeriding, the future of Australian freeride is extremely promising. And it goes to show that we don’t need to have mountains as big as the likes of Europe or North America to be able to able to consider ourselves as Freeride athletes.”

It is great to see Hotham host the event and congratulations to presenting sponsors, Mammut, Volkl skis and Nitro Australia. Hotham at its best is hard to beat and there have been some outstanding days so far this season and no doubt there are more to come. Get there this winter if you can, you will not be disappointed.

When you do visit Hotham we recommend staying at the Arlberg, a Hotham icon, centrally located and a short walk from  Hotham Central and some of the best views in town.

Freeride Qualifier Results

Ski Men

1st Charlie Colmben                96.33 pts

2nd  Coen Bennie-Faulls        94 pts

3^rd Louie Elliot                         91 pts

Ski Women

1^st Gabrielle Lacaze                 85 pts

2nd Arabella                              81 pts

3^rd Pia Bruce                           67 pts

Snowboard men

1^st Vaughn Hardwick        89 pts

2nd Tom Hill                      80 pts

3rd Zoltan Reisz                       76 pts

Snowboard women

1^st  Lara Nievergelt                  70 pts

2nd Rosie Coulter                 65 pts

3^rd  Charlotte Lam                  60 pts

Check out full results for all divisions here.