Zoi Sadowski-Synnott Makes History With First-Ever Trick Combo In Gold-Medal X Games Snowboard Slopestyle Run

For the third time this season, Zoi Sadowski-Synnott landed on top of the podium in a women’s snowboarding event.

The women’s snowboard slopestyle gold she took at X Games Aspen on Friday comes on the heels of her first-place finish in the same event at Dew Tour in December.

In March 2021, she became the first snowboarder, male or female, to win back-to-back slopestyle world titles at the world championships in Aspen.

Not only did the New Zealander remain untouched in the lead throughout all four of her runs at X Games, holding off Olympians Jamie Anderson, who took silver, and Canada’s Laurie Blouin, who took bronze, but she made history as the first female snowboarder ever to land a back-to-back frontside double 1080 and backside double 1080 in competition.

“That’s the combo I’ve been working towards for a year and I’m just so happy to get it done today,” Sadowski-Synnott told me after her win.

The 20-year-old said that she knows of five other women who are capable of that run, and it will almost certainly now be the gold standard—literally—at the Beijing Olympics next month.

“I definitely see the progression going that way,” she said. “It just comes down to the right day and the stars aligning to put it down and for me it just happened to be today and I’m super stoked.”

Sadowski-Synnott credited all the women who competed with her in Friday’s final—Anderson, Blouin, Kokomo Murase, Anna Gasser, Tess Coady, Hailey Langland and Annika Morgan—with pushing the progression of women’s slopestyle in the last five years. “I think coming into the Olympics that push has been even harder,” she said.

It was a difficult day to even land a run, let alone a historic one. Flat light gave riders trouble on the landings and made the high-spin moves disorienting.

“I’m really impressed with everyone; it was hard out there but the course was so great,” Anderson told me. X Games always kills it. I’m so impressed with Zoi and happy for her and for all the girls.”

Anderson, who is the reigning Olympic slopestyle gold medalist and the 2014 Sochi Games gold medalist as well, acknowledged that the level of riding has progressed monumentally since slopestyle debuted in the 2014 Games.

And high-level slopestyle riding wasn’t even on display at the Pyeongchang Games in 2018, when high winds derailed riders’ planned runs and left them simply trying not to get hurt. At X Games in 2018, Anderson won gold with a run that included a cab double cork 900. At the Olympics the following month, she won gold with a backside 540, a cab 540 and a front 720—because riders fell on 80 percent of their runs.

“It’s hard to say” whether the back-to-back double 1080s will be the requirement to contend for gold in Beijing, Anderson said. “It depends on the conditions and how all the jumps are built, but it’s getting to that level.”

It certainly gives Sadowski-Synnott as good a shot as anyone at bringing home gold after finishing 13th in her Olympic debut in Pyeongchang.

When Sadowski-Synnott took bronze in big air at those same Olympics, she became only the second New Zealander to medal at the Winter Olympics, after Annelise Coberger took silver in women’s slalom at the Albertville 1992 Games. Now, she’s helping inspire a whole new generation of young Kiwi female snowboarders.

“I’ve seen a wave of young guns coming through after the last Olympics and there’s a few younger ones who are coming up who are absolutely ripping, so we’re definitely going to see more female snowboarders out of New Zealand,” Sadowski-Synnott said.