i'm not really sure if this is a completely valid argument or not, but the thought just popped into my head...
they call it freestyle skiing in the olympics, but with all the structure they have and the exact things they have to do correctly in order to score points, how much of aerials is actually "free"? as the article stated, there is very little progression in the sport and it has been pretty much the same for a long time. That means that the athletes have very little room to be free in their trick choices. in big air and every other freeskiing comp that we are all familiar with, the athletes are free to do whatever trick they want. They can do any combination of flips, grabs, and rotations in order to score the highest, but in aerials it seems to me that there are certain things that an athlete must do. I just feel that labeling aerials as "freestyle" is completely untrue because the skiers just cant really be "free" in their style.