Airleigh's Story
Fast Facts
Sport: Freestyle Skiing
Event: Aerials
Olympic History: Milano Cortina 2026
Highlights: Deer Valley 2025 Australian Aerials Team sweep
Year Born: 1999
About Airleigh
Airleigh Frigo will make her Olympic debut in aerial skiing at the 2026 Milano Cortina Games, as a member of the formidable Flying Kangaroos.
She jumped to bronze and fourth in World Cups in early 2025 and followed that a few weeks later with 8th at the World Championships. From the six World Cups leading into the Games she achieved four top- 10 performances.
Born in 1999 and raised in Sunbury, Victoria, Airleigh came to aerial skiing through a childhood in gymnastics and other sports, a pathway shared by many in Australia’s freestyle ranks.
She joined the Victorian Institute of Sport and the national aerial skiing setup, progressing through domestic and international development pathways before earning an Olympic Winter Institute of Australia athlete performance contract in 2023.
Airleigh’s international debut came in the North American development circuit in early 2019 at Park City, where she placed inside the top‑15 across a two‑event Nor‑Am Cup weekend. She returned the next northern winter and climbed the order, highlighted by a sixth place at Le Relais in Québec, an early sign that her jumps and landings were beginning to translate under competition pressure. The pandemic interrupted her 2020–21 season, but she re‑emerged at the end of 2021 for her World Cup debut in Ruka, Finland, and closed that season back in Park City with her first Nor‑Am podium in second, consolidating the base for a full World Cup campaign.
The 2022–23 season brought important benchmarks. Airleigh posted 16th at Ruka, reached her first World Cup final at Le Relais in 12th, and made her World Championship debut at Bakuriani, placing 14th, each result marking progress in degree of difficulty and execution under lights and TV cameras. Back home in September 2023 she won on Australian soil, the Water Jump Grand Prix at Brisbane’s Geoff Henke Olympic Winter Training Centre, an achievement she later described as a special first win on home soil.
Airleigh opened 2023–24 with a top‑20 at Ruka and then competed in Changchun before an injury curtailed the second half of her northern winter. She stayed in Australia to rehabilitate, then returned to full training at Brisbane’s year‑round water ramps, an investment that would pay off within months.
Her international breakthrough arrived in January 2025 at Lac‑Beauport, Canada, where she earned her maiden World Cup medal, finishing third behind teammate Laura Peel and the USA’s Karenna Elliott. It was a composed, career‑first podium that confirmed her step up to consistent finals contention at the top level.
Two weeks later she helped create Australian history at Deer Valley, Utah. On an evening of heavy snow and truncated training, Australians swept the podium for the first time in any FIS Freestyle World Cup event, with Peel first, Danielle Scott second and Abbey Willcox third, while Frigo finished fourth to complete an unprecedented Australian 1‑2‑3‑4.
Airleigh kept banking finals. She placed seventh at Beidahu, China, narrowly missing the super‑final, and added a 12th in Almaty, Kazakhstan, before recording ninth at the season‑ending Olympic test event in Livigno, Italy. The campaign culminated at the 2025 FIS Freestyle World Championships in St Moritz/Engadin, where she advanced to the opening round of finals and finished eighth overall, while compatriot Danielle Scott claimed bronze. The result underlined Frigo’s emergence as a reliable championship‑week performer.
Away from the scoreboard, the Sunbury‑born Victorian says she “always wanted to do things that other people could not,” a spirit that helps explain her late‑teen switch from gymnastics to aerials in 2017 and her steady rise through the development ranks. She names competing on the World Cup tour and that inaugural Brisbane water jump win among her proudest moments, and lists gymnastics, basketball and dance aerobics as formative sports, threads visible in the air sense and discipline she brings to training at the Geoff Henke Olympic Winter Training Centre.
With a first World Cup podium, a World Championships top‑eight and multiple finals across 2025 and 2026, Airleigh has established herself within Australia’s aerials team. She continues to build the technical base and consistency required to keep improving in the extremely difficult event.
