Finn Bilous
Wānaka, New Zealand | Active: 2016-present | Known for: two-time Olympian, Youth Olympic medallist, freestyle-to-freeride crossover | Current: film-focused freeride skier working with Red Bull, Völkl and Oakley, with recent podium results in Natural Selection and major backcountry film projects
Verbier was the moment the crossover stopped looking theoretical. On the Bec des Rosses in March 2024, Finn Bilous dropped into terrain that does not care about park habits, social clips or old contest credentials. The face was steep, exposed and broken into features that punish hesitation. He threaded into the central couloir, linked cliffs with pace still under him, then spun a clean 360 off the Hollywood Cliff before airing again lower down. That run earned third at the YETI Xtreme Verbier, but the placing was only part of the story. The bigger point was visual. Bilous did not ski the venue like a slopestyle rider visiting freeride for a season. He looked like someone who had finally found a format wide enough for all the tools he had been carrying for years.
Snowpark NZ came before the bigger stages. Bilous is tied to Wānaka in the way certain skiers are tied to a training ground that shapes their whole movement pattern. Before the Freeride World Tour starts, before the Olympic bibs, before the Alaska film trips, there was Snowpark NZ and the wider southern-hemisphere rhythm of park laps, spring slush, switch takeoffs and long days spent dialing tricks until they sat right. That background matters because his skiing has never looked built only for judges. It has always carried a freer feel through the shoulders and hips, even when the tricks themselves came from pure park progression. He learned early how to move between rails, jump lips and side-hit logic without flattening the style into something purely functional.
The first public proof arrived at Lillehammer 2016. Bilous won silver in Youth Olympic halfpipe and then bronze in slopestyle, giving New Zealand its first Winter Youth Olympic medal and then a second one a few days later. That combination says a lot about his range. He was not a halfpipe specialist who happened to survive a slopestyle day. He was already a skier with enough air awareness, enough park literacy and enough competitive nerve to medal in two separate formats at the same event. For New Zealand freeskiing, still building international depth at the time, those results were a real marker.
The timeline from Lillehammer to Alaska is unusually clean. The first big date is 2016 with the Youth Olympic silver and bronze. In February 2018 he reached his first Winter Olympics in PyeongChang and finished 13th in slopestyle, only one place outside the final. Seven months later he took his first World Cup podium with third in big air at Cardrona. In 2022 he returned to the Olympics in Beijing, finishing 18th in big air and 15th in slopestyle. Then the path bent. In January 2024 he took second at the Freeride World Tour’s Verbier Pro. In March 2024 he followed that with third at the YETI Xtreme Verbier. By 2025 and 2026, the schedule leaned harder toward filming and natural-terrain events than toward FIS park starts.
The one World Cup podium still matters because of how it happened. Cardrona in September 2018 was not a lucky weather day or a diluted field. Bilous finished third behind Andri Ragettli and Evan McEachran, and FIS coverage singled out one of the qualifying tricks that defined the week: a switch triple rodeo 1440 with the grab held through the rotation. That detail matters because it captures the sort of skier he was in his first major contest phase. Bilous was not winning by stripping runs down to safe mathematics. He was building them around shape, off-axis comfort and the confidence to ski switch into a heavy takeoff without making the whole move look forced. Cardrona gave him a podium, but it also gave him a recognisable profile.
His trick language always hinted at something beyond contests. Bilous’ park skiing was rooted in the modern toolkit: switch takeoffs, dub and triple-cork variations, clear mute and safety grabs, and enough rail fluency to keep a full slopestyle run alive. The switch triple rodeo 1440 at Cardrona sits in that lane. So do the kind of compact spins and controlled axis changes that kept him relevant in big air. But the interesting part is how those habits translated later. In freeride terrain, the same takeoff patience becomes useful on a pillow transfer. The same calm upper body helps when sluff starts chasing a landing. The same feel for pop and body position makes a flat spin off a cliff look connected to the terrain instead of pasted onto it. Bilous’ technique made the discipline shift believable.
That technical crossover is why he became more compelling once the course stopped being man-made. Plenty of park riders can stomp a switch dub 12 on a salted landing. Fewer can read a steep entrance, feather speed through broken snow, straight-air a compression and still add a spin where the mountain leaves room for one. Bilous began to look better, not worse, once the terrain stopped repeating itself.
The Olympic record is real even without a final. PyeongChang 2018 and Beijing 2022 are essential to the page even though neither Games turned into a medal week. In 2018 he finished 13th in slopestyle, barely outside the final. In Beijing he doubled up in big air and slopestyle, placing 18th and 15th. Those are not empty appearances. They tell you he stayed inside New Zealand’s top international freeski layer across two Olympic cycles, in a period when men’s park skiing got denser, more technical and much less forgiving. An Olympic final would have pushed him into a different rating bracket here, but the absence of one does not erase the value of making two Games and staying competitive across both disciplines.
2024 was the hinge year. The Freeride World Tour gave the transition public shape. At the opening 2024 Verbier Pro, Bilous finished second with a run built on speed, fluidity and a flat spin that stood out immediately in the official recap. Two months later he returned to Verbier and made history as the first rider to 360 off the Hollywood Cliff on the Xtreme face. Those were not anonymous lower-tier results. They came on the tour’s most visible stop and final, on one of the most watched freeride venues in the sport. By late 2024, FWT’s own No Fall Zone episode described his direction clearly: stepping away from the tour to focus on filming while pushing the creative side of backcountry skiing harder.
The filmography explains the second identity. Matchstick’s 2024 athlete segment for Calm Beneath Castles framed Bilous in Alaska after a busy winter on the Freeride World Tour. The setting mattered. Alaska strips a skier down to line choice, terrain reading and whether the takeoff still makes sense when the landing is steep, natural and moving under weather. Bilous was there for the first time, not as a novelty cameo, but as someone trusted to contribute real skiing. The 2025 Matchstick film After the Snowfall pushed that story forward again, including British Columbia footage and a later released segment, A Cathedral of Pillows, with Bilous skiing alongside Ben Richards, Craig Murray and Marcus Goguen in deep interior terrain.
Those projects matter more than a standard “also films” footnote. They show where his career value sits now. He is no longer best described as a two-time Olympian who sometimes goes freeriding. He is better described as a New Zealand skier whose contest years built the platform for a more creative mountain-based phase. That is a different identity, and a stronger one than many athletes manage after stepping off the stricter FIS circuit.
The current chapter is still moving. In April 2026, Bilous finished third at YETI Natural Selection Ski Alaska behind Colby Stevenson and Markus Eder. That podium matters because Natural Selection demands a different kind of skiing than either slopestyle or classic freeride judging. The venue changes, the snow shifts, and the run has to feel continuous rather than broken into isolated hero moments. Bilous landing on that podium says the full crossover is now complete. He is bringing park timing, freeride line choice and film-skiing creativity into the same competitive space.
That is the right place to leave him for now. Not in the old Olympic lane, and not reduced to one World Cup podium from 2018. The useful present-tense picture is sharper than that: a Wānaka skier with Youth Olympic medals, two Winter Games, one FIS podium, two major Verbier results, a stated move toward filming, Alaska segments with Matchstick, and a 2026 Natural Selection podium that confirms the second act is not a side project. It is the main story now.
