Freestyle Skiing Coordinator, Joe Fitzgerald, said, "It is great to follow all the different infrastructure developments around the world. These improvements show that our NSA’s, Organisers and the ski areas are looking towards the long term in the development of these courses. In the immediate future, we are going to have a much better situation for the staging of our global ski tour this coming winter.”

At Nakiska (CAN), the Calgary 1988 Olympic mountain, the lowest section of the downhill course was widened 10 metres. Alpine Canada’s focus has been on improvement to the course itself. 

Jim Sidorchuk, Manager of ski cross events and officials stated, “We want to create a better and safer race experience for the athletes. We had challenges with the width of the run, so with the cooperation of the host resort there was a slope-widening project. This has been the biggest way to make improvements with the most impact for our event.”

Lake Placid’s (USA) Whiteface Mountain upgraded the Wilderness Run with the redevelopment of the mogul finish area. The original slope was used for the 1980 Olympic Winter Games and was then homologated for the 1991 FIS Freestyle World Ski Championships. After fully upgrading the aerial site two years ago, ORDA (Olympic Regional Development Association), Whiteface Mountain and the USSA took the next step and invested into lowering the finish area towards the mid-mountain base lodge.

Kreischberg (AUT) has been redeveloping several courses in anticipation of this season's freestyle ski cross and snowboarding slopestyle World Cups and the 2015 World Freestyle Skiing and Snowboard Championships. Further upgrading of the mogul finish area, redevelopment of the halfpipe and aerial / big air jump and a new slopestyle course were carried out all summer. 

Hello Haas, the World Championships manager, said, “We are now implementing our plans to fully improve the courses we used in the 2003 FIS Snowboard World Championships and to add a few new ones. These disciplines have really developed since we staged our last championships and we want to catch up.’ 

In Megeve (FRA), the Organiser is in the final stages of fully widening the finish area, which is a homologated alpine downhill course. It will be the slope for the mogul and ski cross FIS Freestyle Skiing World Cup Final in 2015. The moguls final was held in 2012, whilst ski cross used the finish in January 2013 and will host another event this season. In 2015, they share the same finish zone on the same weekend.

La Plagne (FRA), the host of the moguls and ski cross World Cup Final has fully upgraded its Jean Luc Crétier Stadium. This includes a re-grading of the finish area, widening out of the finish zone with the removal of the timing building and the surface lift. The Organisers constructed a new state-of-the-art finish building, race office complex and VIP zone. 

Jean-Marc Ganzer, director of Plange Evenements, said “We look forward to hosting the Freestyle Skiing World Cup finals again. The work we have done in the finish area creates a great focal point for competitions.” 

Fitzgerald concluded, ‘Along with all of the new facilities in Rosa Khutor (RUS) for the 2014 Olympics and full upgrading of Myrkdalen Voss (NOR) for last season’s FIS Freestyle World Ski Championships and now the developments this summer, we can see our partners have placed a priority on improving the infrastructure to make the competitions easier to organise. It creates a better situation for the competitors, spectators and fans for our events.”

Source: the official FIS site