As their knees bob up and down like coiled springs, directing their skis between the small mounds of packed snow, one wonders how on earth mogul skiers’ knee joints are still intact.
“You are just falling down the mountain,” said men’s gold medallist Cooper Woods in his post-race press conference on Thursday. “Wrecking your joints the whole way.”
When done well, the moguls looks sleek and stylish. It is the ultimate flow-state sport, according to women’s gold medallist Liz ‘the Lizard’ Lemley. Athletes try to get into their rhythm, like Tigger bouncing down a mountain at around 25mph.
“Flying through the course, it feels slow and smooth, I have time,” women’s silver medallist Jaelin Kauf from the United States said.
But every turn is toying with them, trying to knock them off balance, trying to get them to lose control. Faster and faster the humps come at them, the body rattling as if it were inside a pinball machine.
“You’re just trying to scramble,” said Kauf.
The 28-degree, 245-meter course consists of a short section of moguls at the top, then a jump, a long middle section of moguls, then a jump and a final mogul sprint to the finish line. Each run takes less than 30 seconds. Judges score athletes on turns, jumps and time. Turning technique is the most important aspect, representing 60 percent of the overall score.
When scoring the turns, judges look at the fall line (whether a skier can hold a straight line), carving (edging the skis through turns to control speed), absorption and utilisation of the bumps in turning, body position, pole plants control, and aggressiveness.
There is no doubt mogul skiers’ bodies take a beating. Anterior cruciate ligament tears in the knee are common — Olympic champion Lemley suffered hers at the start of the 2024-2025 season — but there is a misconception.
“It’s not so bad when you do it properly,” laughed men’s silver medallist Mikaël Kingsbury who, like many, actually feels the impact more in his back. “When you’re hurt, this sport sucks. But when you’re healthy, it’s not as bad on the knees as people think.”
Women’s Team USA coach Matthew Gnoza thought mogul skiing gets a “bad rep.”
“A good mogul skier has good knees,” he told The Athletic. “It’s the bad ones who resist the absorption whose knees start to hurt.”
When things go pear-shaped, knee injuries are common, as is the case across the board in skiing, but crashes from jumps can also cause shoulder or collarbone injuries, as happened to 2022 gold medallist Jakara Anthony last year.
“Alpine is more brutal,” Lemley’s coach John Dowling told The Athletic. “Speed kills.”
Mogul skiers need to perform two jumps as well as navigate their way down the bumpy course. (David Ramos/Getty Images)
Mogul skiers have to be technically exceptional as they navigate fast, aggressive turns but also a risk taker to show acrobatic flair with the two jumps in between. A blend between the tricksters on the slopestyle and the speed demons in the downhill races, mogul skiers enjoy flaunting their talents.
Good mogul skiing is about staying in contact with the snow; attacking, projecting your body down the steep and bumpy slope with grace and poise.
To stay balanced, skiers must keep their feet underneath their body so the center of mass is over the base of support. They must also put pressure towards the front of the boots and to the outside ski.
But the human instinct, as a defence mechanism, is to lean back, pushing the feet forward, throwing everything off balance.
When the upper body is steady, skiers are in equilibrium, allowing the knees and hips to do the work, absorbing the bumps as they come. The coloured knee patches worn by mogul skiers contrast to the colour of their suits so the judges notice how quickly and dynamically their knees are pinging.
The knees and ankles take the load, acting as shock absorbers through the uneven terrain, but that shock travels up the spine. Hard, icy slopes can be particularly unforgiving and many skiers complain of getting “mogul back” — ‘gobba’ in Italian means mogul but also hunchbacked. Ice baths and yoga are on the recovery menu to soothe the pain.
A lot of the female Team USA mogul skiers, including Kauf, do pilates, focusing on their core strength and small stabilizing muscles. Strength and conditioning training with exercises such as squats, single-leg squats, hamstring curls, and plyometric work are vital to cope with the impact.
Other exercises include repetition of box jumps to test agility, while trampoline work helps prepare the body for absorbing the moguls’ impact. Trampolines are useful for practising flipping, landing and bouncing vigorously to mimic the sport’s demands.
Like a gymnast with a floor routine, or a defensive back in the NFL, athletes have to be explosive with their movements to propel themselves into the air for their tricks. But they also have to have technique in somersaulting and twisting to ensure a seamless landing before re-entering the moguls again.
World Cup athletes often break through around 18 and can compete into their early 30s — as shown by Kauf, 29, and Kingsbury, 33. Gnoza does not think it is the impact on their body which forces athletes to retire. While injuries can be terminal, more often it is the technical ceiling that prompts retirement.
Liz Lemley warms up prior to the women’s moguls final, which she won on February 11, 2026. (Michael Reaves / Getty Images)
“When you do this sport, you know there is a danger element,” said Woods. “We are skiing very fast through things you want to avoid.”
But if you are wincing watching these knees snapping up and down, fear not.
“It’s fun to just float in the air,” as Sweden’s Elis Lundholm said.