The Big Air Chur FIS Freeski and Snowboard World Cup will see freeski take the spotlight tomorrow with snowboard due to take over on Saturday (October 21).

With an estimated 30,000 fans set to attend over the course of the weekend amid a music festival atmosphere in a town reputedly the oldest in Switzerland, the Big Air Chur Festival will offer a vivid expression of skiing’s cutting edge barely imaginable when the FIS was founded in 1924.

The freeski competition will be headlined by the likes of home athlete Mathilde Gremaud, Tess Ledeux of France and Canada’s Megan Oldham on the women’s side, while Norway’s three-times overall Big Air champion Birk Ruud, Andri Ragettli of Switzerland and Austria’s Matej Svancer are a few of the big names in the men’s competition.

The snowboard competition is expected to feature a strong challenge from Japanese athletes such as Reira Iwabuchi, Kokomo Murase and Miyabi Onitsuka, with others such as Canada’s Laurie Blouin, Mia Brookes of Britain, the world junior Big Air champion last year and slopestyle world champion this year, and Austria’s Anna Gasser will be well in the mix.

On the men’s side names to watch out for include Valentino Guseli of Australia, Sean Fitzsimons of the United States, Sweden’s Sven Thorgren and Taiga Hasegawa of Japan.

While the original programme for the freeski competition was set to see qualifications in the morning and finals taking place under lights in  the evening, heavy rains forecast for tomorrow have forced a schedule change, bringing qualifications forward to today.

Forecasts indicate the rain should ease in time for tomorrow’s planned finals.

Saturday’s weather is looking more stable and snowboard competition remains on schedule.

This year the Big Air Chur event features a the brand-new jump set-up involving 35 metres of the world-renowned JF Dry Ski technology on the in-ramp, which then transitions to snow a few metres before the compression, with the jump and landing constructed of snow as usual.

FIS reports that feedback on the in-run through yesterday's training has been “overwhelmingly positive, with some athletes stating they can’t even notice the difference.”