Silver medalist Jamie Anderson of the United States celebrates during the victory ceremony after the Snowboard – Ladies’ Big Air Final on day 13 of the PyeongChang 2018 Winter Olympic Games at Phoenix Snow Park on February 22, 2018
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Slopestyle snowboarding pioneer Jamie Anderson is tied with snowboard cross legend Lindsey Jacobellis for the most gold medals (two) and most overall medals (three) in U.S. Olympic snowboarding history.
Anderson is also the most decorated woman in Winter X Games history, with 21 medals in 23 appearances.
Even if she never entered another competition, Anderson has inked her name in the snowboarding record books forever.
She can be proud of what she has accomplished (including 11 career World Cup wins and two FIS World Championship medals), even as she takes on new challenges, like being a mother to two girls under three, founding a nonprofit to break down barriers to snowboarding and other winter activities, advocating for climate protections with Protect Our Winters (POW) and producing a backcountry film project, Great Alaskan Adventure, with her fiancé, snowboarder Tyler Nicholson.
But five months removed from the birth of her second daughter, Anderson is finding that her competitive fire has returned. On Wednesday, she revealed that she’ll be returning to FIS competition for the first time since 2022 (she did compete, and podium, in the 2024 Natural Selection Tour) and will attempt to qualify for the Milano Cortina Winter Olympics.
“I don’t know where it’s coming from, but I’m fired up,” Anderson said. “As always, I’m going to go with the flow, trust my intuition and play it by ear. It will probably be mayhem traveling with a family of four, but I’m feeling inspired to get some tricks I was doing pre-motherhood back on the table.”
The slopestyle and big air landscape has changed immensely in just three years. At X Games Aspen this past January, New Zealander Zoi Sadowski-Synnott became the first woman to land a backside triple cork 1440 in a slopestyle competition.
While Anderson may not get that trick into her bag before February’s Olympics, she remains one of the most stylish and technical women in the field. That goes a long way at the Olympics, where judges scrutinize the cleanliness of riders’ grabs and landings.
Before the Olympics, however, Anderson will have to qualify for the U.S. Women’s Slopestyle Team. She is currently training in New Zealand ahead of the upcoming slate of qualifying events, which include World Cup contests in Steamboat, Colorado (December 13–14, 2025); Aspen, Colorado (January 7–9, 2026); and Laax, Switzerland (January 15–17, 2026).
Anderson has a bit of ground to make up, not having participated in the first Olympic qualifying event in late January/early February 2025, the Toyota U.S. Grand Prix in Aspen.
The U.S. can name a maximum of four athletes per gender in each discipline to the U.S. Olympic Snowboard Team, pending on how many quota spots FIS awards the USOPC.
“Jamie is one of the greatest slopestyle athletes of all time and will continue to be a pioneer in the sport of snowboarding,” said Rick Bower, sport director of the Hydro Flask U.S. Snowboard Team. “I have no doubt that if she puts her mind and her energy into it, she will have a successful go at competing again.”