Athletes from around the world on Thursday started their first official training in aerials, a freestyle ski discipline, as part of the Freestyle Ski, Snowboard and Freeski World Championships running through March 5 in Georgia’s ski resort of Bakuriani.
Irakli Burchuladze, the Director of Mountain Trails Agency, said the training had kicked off in what is one of the early sections of the tournament programme, with the final of the discipline set to see 50 competitors take to the slopes of the Kokhta mountain on Sunday.
Photo: Mountain Trails Agency
The wider Championships involve hundreds of competitors from 42 countries on the main trails of Didveli and Kokhta mountains, where they compete across seven disciplines. Their roster includes Georgian athletes, who are competing in ski cross and freestyle.
In his comments for the event, the International Ski Federation’s Joseph Fitzgerald said Bakuriani was “prepared” to host the tournament and noted Georgia’s “very big” skiing culture.
Joseph Fitzgerald representative of International Ski Federation Photo: Mountain Trails Agency
Bakuriani was granted the hosting rights of the tournament by a FIS congress in 2018. The competition is held with the support of the Georgian Government and organised by the Mountain Trails Agency and the Georgian Ski Federation.
The programme for the Championships is available here.