Aerials 101 with Marion Thénault and Lewis Irving
How much can you accomplish in three seconds?
Chances are, your answer is “not much”—unless, that is, you’re an aerials skier.
The freestyle skiing discipline of aerials was a demonstration sport at Calgary 1988 and Albertville 1992, before becoming an official medal event at Lillehammer 1994.
Along with the men’s and women’s events, Milano Cortina 2026 will also feature the mixed team aerials event, which made its Olympic debut at Beijing 2022.
READ: Canada wins bronze in Olympic debut of mixed team aerials
That year, the trio of Marion Thénault, Lewis Irving and Miha Fontaine claimed bronze, Canada’s fifth all-time Olympic medal in aerials.
So, we’ve got Thénault and Irving on board to help explain what the sport is all about, from an athlete’s perspective.
How does aerials work?
Competitors ski down a slope for 70 metres before hitting a small, steeply inclined ramp known as a kicker. Those kickers come in different heights, up to about 6 metres tall, with the capacity to launch skiers up to 15 metres above the landing hill.
While in the air—for, as noted above, about three seconds—an athlete attempts to complete as many flips and twists as possible before landing in a controlled manner.
If you’re watching aerials, you’ll likely hear the term “full”, which is one flip with one twist. A “double full” is a flip with two twists. So, while a “full double full” and “double full full” are both triple twisting double flips, in the first skill, there are two twists on the second flip, while in the second skill there are two twists on the first flip. And yes, a “triple full” would be three twists on one flip.
A panel of five judges evaluates the skier’s air (takeoff, height and distance), form in the air and landing. Those scores are multiplied by the jump’s degree of difficulty for a final score.
The mixed team aerials event consists of teams of three athletes (two women and one man, or vice versa) whose scores are combined to get a team total.
Aerials events at Milano Cortina 2026 take place at the Livigno Aerials and Moguls Park, on Feb. 17-19 and 21.
What’s going through an athlete’s mind leading into a jump?
“When I’m at the top, I usually try to clear my mind because I don’t want to be thinking about anything distracting, related to results or expectations or conditions,” says Thénault, a 25-year-old from Sherbrooke, Que.
“I’m just trying to clear that up so I can focus only on my keywords … Sometimes that kind of motivating keyword like ‘stay tall’, ‘confident’, ‘trusted’, things like that.”
Irving, a 30-year-old from Quebec City, takes a similarly zen approach prior to a jump.
“Breathing is a big one; I mean, the stress and anxiety and everything’s huge in our sport,” he says. “So, I just try to ground myself, remind myself that I’ve done this before, I’ve been through it all, and just go and have fun.”
What’s it like to go through a jump?
Once she’s headed down the slope, Thénault makes quick evaluations of her speed, as well as the wind and snow conditions, to gauge how those will affect her in the air. Then it’s about concentrating on achieving a solid takeoff.
“If I’ve hit a good takeoff, I barely have anything to do in the air except focusing on landing
in the right spot because I’m looking at my landing,” she says. “If I missed my takeoff then I’m going to have to deal with the consequences. … I’m going to try to adapt so I can land on my feet; even if it was not the perfect jump, I still want to do it safely.”
Despite only having a few moments in the air, Thénault reacts to what she can see and how she feels the air, making technical adjustments to ensure a safe landing.
“There’s a lot of things happening,” she says. “But in my head, I feel like I have the time to think about so many things.”
How do aerialists perfect a new skill?
That acrobatic instinct—the ability to land on one’s feet, no matter what—is a fundamental skill in aerials, according to Thénault. But how do these skiers build their repertoire of twists and flips in a relatively safe setting?
It starts on a trampoline, while attached to bungee cords, to get the feeling of the trick into the skier’s body. Then it’s plenty of repetitions on the water ramp, a metal structure similar to a ski hill, with the athletes landing in water.
Eventually, it’s time to try it out on the snow.
“For sure, the first time you do a trick on snow, it’s that feeling of, like, unknown. And it’s really scary,” says Thénault. “But at the same time, the second you turn your skis towards the jump and you’re going towards the jump, it’s like your body knows how to do it because you’ve done it so many times.
“It’s scary but so satisfying after.”
But even once that’s successfully done, it’s not as though the learning process is over and that trick is permanently locked in. Irving regularly goes back to square one at the start of a season, gradually building his way up to his most difficult tricks.
What’s the process of building up those tricks?
“Our sport is one where the learning curve is actually super slow,” says Irving.
“We’ll usually learn how to do just a straight up back flip, and then add a twist to that, and then every little step is just adding an extra twist or adding an extra flip, but you’re never skipping any steps.”
And even after that arduous and incremental process, sometimes the pieces don’t all come together until the actual competition itself.
“Usually aerials training is, it’s kind of funny, because there won’t be that many good jumps, a lot of crashes, people trying to figure it out,” he says. “You almost question if they actually got this. And by the time comp comes, everyone’s acing their stuff and putting it down.”