Mac Forehand exclusive: The freeski rebel out for redemption at Milano-Cortina 2026

Mac Forehand has no desire to conform. It’s his job, after all, to push boundaries in freestyle skiing and redefine what is possible.

The U.S. athlete achieved the seemingly impossible in 2019 by winning the slopestyle overall World Cup crown in his debut season, aged 17.

Proving he was no flash in the pan, the Connecticut native backed that up with fourth at the 2021 World Championships, before stomping the world’s first forward double cork 2160 in competition to win a Big Air X Games title in 2023, and sealed another slopestyle World Cup Crystal Globe in 2024.

Like many freeski champions, Forehand has honed his competition skills in the backcountry and by street skiing, where there are no rules and athletes experiment with new tricks.

“There is a bit of rebellion involved when pushing the creativity of the sport,” he told Olympics.com in an exclusive interview.

“You just have to be careful when you're out there trying to get shots for filming, but the skills you gain through that type of skiing definitely transfer to competitions, so it helps.

“Some people will care that we ski on the street and sometimes we get asked to leave which is a bummer. That's part of it, honestly, seeing if you can get the trick done.”

How Mac Forehand stays humble

There are no tangible rewards for skiing in the backcountry or the street, other than capturing trailblazing content on film, and the reactions of fans online.

Nothing is manicured, and the skiers spend hours building their apparatus.

After experiencing so much success so quickly in his career, this type of skiing provides another useful benefit for Forehand.

“You get super humbled because it’s way, way, harder. Not necessarily because of the tricks’ complexity, but because of the process and the environment. You spend hours building these features in snowstorms and blizzards,” he continues.

“You can land them perfectly but then sink knee-deep in snow as you don’t know what lies underneath. So skiing in these environments is a constant learning process. You’re also so in the moment that you can’t overthink things.

“But when you get a certain shot after working on it for so long it’s my favourite feeling in the world. You go from being totally over a certain rail but then finally landing it and you’re suddenly so happy and in the moment."

"I love then landing those jumps in competition. It’s the craziest feeling in its own right.

“So there's like so much creativity work goes into it. In slopestyle World Cups, you have a full run with 6 or 7 features and you have two or three one-hour practice sessions to figure out the entire run. So you have to be like have a creative mind and I love that."

A perfect example of this came at the 2023 X Games.

One day after winning the slopestyle silver medal, Forehand lined up in the Big Air competition alongside a stacked field including Olympic gold medallist Alex Hall and world champion Troy Podmilsak.

On the final jump of the night, Forehand perfectly executed the world’s first forward double cork 2160, meaning he took off backwards and spun through the air five and a half times, pulling off a Cuban grab in the process.

When a giant “50” showed up on the big screen to signify a perfect score and confirm his win, the crowd roared with delight.

“That's probably the most scared I've ever been on skis… I was just terrified of the last jump,” Forehand admitted.

“All the pressure was there as I had to land it and the trick itself is super dangerous.

“After I did that trick, I went to watch the halfpipe event with my friend Colby Stevenson, and he gave me a hug or whatever and then he was like, ‘You know you could have died trying that, right?’ And I was like, ‘I guess you're right!’ but I don't think about that in the moment.”

Gravity doesn’t mean anything to Mac Forehand

Forehand craves that adrenaline rush in life.

When he’s not twisting through the sky on skis, he can be found mountain biking, cliff diving, or surfing.

“With skiing, I can kind of turn my brain off a bit, but mountain biking, keep your brain on all the time. It's gnarly if you fall and it sucks compared to like skiing as you're falling on dirt and rock,” he said.

Another moment of creative genius mixed in with a minor disregard for his well-being saw Forehand ski the world’s first upside-down rail slide in 2023.

He’d seen a video of someone doing it on a dirt bike, drew out his idea on a piece of paper and took it to his sponsors who helped make it a reality.

“I drew it up like 5 to 10 times - I'm not a very good artist. But they got the idea and it took two years of planning to figure out how we were going to do it," he said.

But the wait was worth it and after 55-60 attempts, Forehand got the shot he was so desperate to capture at Sunday River in Maine.

“It actually wasn't too scary as the scaffolding guy did a super good job and we did it the safest way possible. I was thinking about what could go wrong more than any other jump I’ve tried before because no one had done it before. But it worked out great and it was another really good time.”

Reggae for happy vibes on the mountain

Training for death-defying jumps and the perfect landing is almost as much a mental battle as it is physical.

As such, Forehand must find a way to balance the good days when everything he tries works with bad days when he struggles to find the ‘flow state’.

The 23-year-old achieves that in part through listening to an eclectic mix of genres at training, with the unorthodox choice of reggae being his go-to of late.

“I don't know why! I've always loved reggae music, but recently it’s been helping me stay happy when I'm skiing,” he said.

“I've had training days where you're skiing by yourself and just stressed out or angry, but that seems to never work for me. That's the worst thing you can do. Angry skiing works for some, but not for me. I try to keep a positive mindset in all of it. I ski because I love it, so I just block out the bad feelings mostly.”

One of the few major events of Forehand’s career that he wasn’t happy with was the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics.

Considering his good form going into the event, he was left somewhat dejected after finishing 11th in Big Air and failing to qualify for the Slopestyle final.

He bounced back in style with two medals at the X Games, and the Milano Cortina 2026 Winter Olympics now offer Forehand the chance to right some wrongs.

“I definitely want redemption from my last Olympic experience,” he said.

“We have a tough, tough team to make, with seven or eight guys that are capable of making it, but I would love to medal there.

"I'm just gonna continue to ski and I'm really excited if I do make the Olympics to go to Milan. It’s a city that I love and they're doing the freestyle skiing in Livigno, which I've never been to before. They have a crazy good park as well.”

After saying this, Forehand checks himself with a smile, knowing that his best chance of making it will be to stay true to the principles that have seen him take in so much success already.

“I’m hopeful I can make it happen, but I definitely won’t be stressing myself out too much. Just kind of live in it and enjoy it.”