Last July, the U.S. freeski team used the Utah Olympic Park airbag for a training camp. Some of the world’s best freeskiers prepared for their seasons by scorching down ramps and practicing their tricks onto the giant airbag.
During the season, the same team earned two medals at the 2026 Milano Cortina Olympics: a slopestyle silver medal from Park City’s Alex Hall and a big air silver from fellow Parkite Mac Forehand.
Clearly all of the offseason repetitions at the park and elsewhere had done their trick.
On Monday morning, the Park City Ski & Snowboard Club will unfurl the airbag for the summer. They are seeking about 30 club volunteers to pair with park staff to get the job done from 9 a.m. to noon. Volunteers will be rewarded with bagels, coffee and juice.
The airbag will be used this summer by U.S. teams, the club’s teams and visiting clubs’ teams. It is one piece of the training puzzle at the park, also including the freestyle training pool and a small gym. The club has 10 teams that train at the park and occasionally at the U.S. Ski Team’s Center of Excellence in Park City.
“It’s a pretty interesting spectacle,” said freeski director Mike Campbell about unpacking the airbag. “It’s a significant weight. It takes almost 50 of us to push the thing around and get it rolled out.”
Campbell estimated that there are about three of the airbags in the country, one in Oregon and possibly one on the East Coast. They’re a critical piece in allowing skiers to get offseason reps and work on their technique. U.S. halfpipe snowboarder Jake Pates said airbag technology allows Japanese snowboarders to dominate that sport; the Japanese took gold and bronze at the 2026 Games.
“They’re just so useful,” Campbell said. “Very lucky to have one in our backyard. We know we were ahead of the curve. You definitely see the progress from a tool like this.”
Campbell and the club coaches refer to the summer as moving season because it’s when athletes often take the biggest leaps with their skiing or snowboarding. Athletes can’t get the same amount of reps on snow.
“In the winter, we get a few reps here and there,” Campbell said. “But we get three days, and then we have to go to an event. … From my perspective, it’s significantly the best training option for these athletes.”
The club’s freestyle team commonly uses the freestyle pool to train, the ski jumping and Nordic combined teams the ski jumping hills and the endurance sports teams the gyms. The club will consider the training season fully up-and-running the second week of June, once all their athletes are let out of school for the summer. The athletes reliant on the pool to train will have to travel this summer to do some more on-snow work, as the pool will close July 15 for renovations.
“This is where we see the progress,” Campbell said. “There’s no replacement for the amount of reps.”